THE Ministry of Labour has noted a high success rate of grievance and dispute resolution in all labour-related issues in the country.
Officiating at a workshop on managing conflicts and resolving disputes effectively through meditation at the Tanoa Plaza Hotel in Suva on Monday, Minister for Labour Jone Usamate said since the inception of the mediation unit in 2008, there had been a slow but decisive increase in the number of grievances reported with the corresponding increase in the settlement rate of such grievances starting from 75 per cent and now hovering around 80 per cent.
"The majority of mediated cases usually achieve resolutions in a few days and only in exceptional circumstances cases proceed to a maximum period of one month," he said.
Mr Usamate said where trade unions anticipated a contemplated strike, informal mediation by their mediators had been a very powerful weapon which had been systematically used to diffuse the potentiality of strikes from their midst since the establishment of the mediation service in 2008.
"We are already witnessing the high success rates of grievance and dispute resolution and the growing recognition and support of our meditation service by all tripartite stakeholders," he said.
Mr Usamate said the meditation process had worked because they were structured, the processes were private and confidential, it was timetabled and had dynamics that ordinary negotiations did not have.
He outlined that meditation was what Fiji needed.
"We need ways of resolving conflicts that allow both parties to walk away happy," Mr Usamate added.