The Significance of the Law on Amicable Resolution of Labor Disputes and the Review of the Practice Thus Far

During the work process, numerous instances of dispute regarding the positions of the employees, or the interpersonal relations between them or between them and their employer may arise. In addition to the traditional judicial method of labor dispute resolution, it is necessary to develop independent and impartial negotiation mechanisms between the parties in the area of individual and collective labor disputes. In Serbia, these are certainly the arbitration settlement of individual and collective labor disputes, and conciliation as a method of resolving collective labor disputes within and through the Republic Agency for Peaceful Settlement of Labor Disputes. There are many benefits to peaceful labor dispute settlement. The goal of supplementary procedures, i.e. procedures for peaceful labor dispute resolution, is to relieve the traditional judicial approach and direct it to the procedures where a judicial settlement of the dispute is truly necessary. Besides the concept, advantages and characteristics of the amicable labor dispute settlement procedures, certain types of these procedures such as mediation, conciliation and arbitration are also analyzed in the theoretical section of this paper, as well as the most important provisions of the Employment Act and the Law on Amicable Resolution of Labor Disputes. In the research section of this paper, the practice of the Republic Agency for Peaceful Settlement of Labor Disputes in the procedures of amicable labor dispute settlement, both for the territory of the Republic of Serbia and the territory of the City of Novi Sad, is analyzed. The primary research data source was the official data of the Republic Agency for Peaceful Settlement of Labor Disputes. The paper is methodologically based on a theoretical analysis of relevant contemporary theoretical views, a normative analysis of legislative sources, and a quantitative analysis of statistical indicators in the domain of the research subject.