Portuguese Railways proposes arbitration to settle dispute

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January and February 1999 saw strike action by train drivers on Portuguese Railways (CP), in a dispute over company restructuring and training. Management proposed recourse to an independent arbitration committee - an innovative approach to conflict resolution in the Portuguese context - but the proposal met with little enthusiasm on the part of the trade union.

Portuguese Railways (Caminhos de Ferro Portugueses, CP) is a publicly-owned enterprise. Over the years, the company has regularly kept up formal collective bargaining over company-level agreements. Since the beginning of the 1980s, these negotiations have been held in a set of bargaining "tables", according to the various job categories and trade union groupings. Currently, there are six such tables.

In late 1998 and early 1999, negotiations have been in progress in the CP bargaining table involving the Union of Train Drivers (Sindicato dos Maquinistas, SMAQ). The issues under discussion are not purely pay demands or working conditions, but a number of issues arising from the planned restructuring of the company. SMAQ is demanding:

• the retention of only one national job category for train drivers after the restructuring.

• pay compensation in exchange for increased job responsibilities, since there will in future be only one operator (the driver) running trains; and

• training on high-speed trains for all drivers rather than only a few that the company chooses as having the greatest technical and professional aptitude.

The dispute over these issues has seen several months of work stoppages and strike threats - including a 10-day strike at the end of January 1999 - interspersed with periods of negotiation. A solution has been found for the issue of job responsibilities, and trains will in future run with two operators (both drivers).

After the public labour administration, which normally assumes the role of mediator and conciliator in labour disputes, tried to intervene in the CP conflict, the company suggested asking an independent arbitration committee to resolve the dispute. In Portugal, possible methods of resolving labour disputes include mediation, conciliation, and arbitration. Although all these have had a legal basis for some years, arbitration has never been used, and the CP proposal, if accepted, would be the first. The arbitration proposal was presented to SMAQ at the beginning of February, and on 16 February the union announced that a further strike was planned for 25 February. Although the possibility of arbitration is not completely out of the question, specialists in industrial relations point to the reluctance of some social partners in Portugal to accept arbitration because they fear losing power in the negotiation process.