An approach to labour arbitration in Spain and its legal problems

Abstract

Arbitration is a means of conflict resolution that, in the Spanish labour relations system, has been consolidated since its democratisation. It is an institution in which an impartial third party resolves the disputes of the parties. This is mainly due to the work carried out by both social agents, trade unions and business associations, as well as by the legislature that have tried to promote it, together with mediation, as ideal formulas to resolve the conflict that occurs in the business environment.

In general, the discrepancies that are submitted to the arbitrator are of a collective nature, since individual disputes can generate problems with the right to effective judicial protection. Similarly, it can resolve conflicts of interest and legal disputes, although it is in the former that arbitration has a wide margin of action, as opposed to the judiciary. This circumstance means that the arbitration has a subclassification, which is given by the type of dispute it resolves and which is not of minor importance, since it will also determine the way in which the award must be challenged.

Although, despite the fact that it is a mechanism that has multiple advantages, it is not the most widely used. In fact, only one of the types of arbitration, precisely the mandatory one in elections to workers’ representatives, has an excellent assessment by those who make an arbitration commitment. For this reason, it has been considered of interest to highlight the most interesting aspects of it, as well as those others that can be improved, in order to offer the reader a panoramic vision of the institution in Spain.