Some Problems of Due Process and Fair Procedure in Labor Arbitration

In the last five years shop talk among arbitrators has tended increasingly to drift into an area vaguely and uneasily identified as process.' The due process problems arbitrators are concerned with and which are the subject of this paper relate to procedural protections for individuals whose rights are being affected by an arbitration between two other parties-the company and the union. process thus may be an even more difficult problem in labor arbitration than in its judicial context, since in addition to the need for standards of fair procedure, the arbitration process raises the question of adequate representation of an affected individual who is not a party to the collective bargaining agreement nor to the arbitration being carried out under that agreement. Professor Willard Wirtz brought the due process issue into sharp focus in his paper, Due Process of Arbitration.2 As Professor Wirtz noted, 'due process' is a symbol borrowed from the lexicon of law, and therefore suspect in this shirtsleeves . . . business of arbitration.3

Arbitration · Business · Economics · Labor disputes · Labor relations · Labour economics · Law and economics · Political science · Process (computing · Programming language · Computer Science · Corporate Law and Human Rights · Dispute Resolution and Class Actions · International Arbitration and Investment Law · Law