Employment disputes and arbitration an account of irreconcilability, with reference to the EU and the USA

This paper concerns employment disputes, a domain where dispute resolution out of court (private justice) has a long tradition, not only in collective labour disputes between trade unions and employers’ associations but also in individual employment disputes. However, in Europe individual employment disputes arbitration is almost never used. By contrast, in the United States arbitration clauses are often written into standardized employment contracts since the early 1990s, in particular in the financial services industry. After an overview of the development of employment relations on both sides of the Atlantic, in this paper converging tendencies are highlighted. It is argued that an increasing popularity of both in-company and court-referred mediation programmes can be observed. Empirical data corroborate such finding.