Voluntary interest arbitration in the Ethiopian labor proclamation: the problems in its design and a way to fix them

Abstract

Some of the objectives of the Ethiopian Labor Proclamation No.377/2003 are “to maintain industrial peace, to guarantee employers and workers’ right to engage in a collective bargaining and to lay down the procedure for the expeditious settlement of labor disputes, which arise between workers and employers”. These objectives can be attained if various types of labor conflicts get recognized and less costly dispute resolution methods are put in place to handle them. Recognizing interest dispute and allowing the submission of such dispute to arbitration has a benefit of avoiding costly measures such as strikes and lock-outs. Therefore, in this expository work, for any individual or policy maker’s use, it is shown how disputes of interest and interest arbitration are recognized by the Labor Proclamation No.377/2003. The work’s main thrust is actually describing the way interest arbitration is designed in the Proclamation and identifying the problems in the designs and proposing a way to fix the problems.

Keywords: Ethiopian Labor Law; Interest Arbitration; Labor Disputes; Interest Disputes