INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS DIVISION (Conciliations)

Mr Liew Kok Pun asked the Minister for Communications and Minister for Labour (a) how many conciliation cases were referred jointly by management and union to the Industrial Relations Division of the Ministry of Labour in 1980; (b) how many of them had to be referred to the Industrial Arbitration Court; (c) if he will give breakdown statistics, in terms of man-days spent by the Ministry's conciliation officers, of (i) the cases that were resolved; (ii) those that were unresolved: and (iii) those that are yet to be resolved; and (d) if he will give breakdown statistics, in terms of the time taken (in days/months) from the point when the case was referred to the Ministry to its successful conciliation, of the cases that were resolved.

The Minister of State for Labour (Mr Sia Kah Hui) (for the Minister for Communications and Minister for Labour): Mr Speaker, Sir, last year a total of 484 new unionized cases were referred to the Labour Relations Division for conciliation. Added to the 142 cases that have been brought forward from 1979, there was a total of 626 cases. Of these, 476 were resolved by the Ministry, 30 referred to the Industrial Arbitration Court and the remaining 120 were carried forward this year.

The time taken to conciliate disputes vary. It depends on the nature of the dispute. The average duration for the resolution of a dispute on proposals for a collective agreement is about three months, while a grievance dispute takes about a week. However, in terms of actual time spent, each case takes less than one man-day on the average.

Mr Liew Kok Pun (Boon Teck): Sir, may I ask the Minister of State what steps is his Ministry taking to speed up the conciliation process?

Mr Sia Kah Hui: Any dispute referred to the Ministry is attended to immediately. Very often the parties concerned are contacted on the telephone to attend meetings.

Delays can be due to several factors, if there were any delays. The representatives of the union and of the management may not have a mandate to agree to counter-proposals during the meetings. Therefore, the meeting will have to be adjourned for them to consult their superiors. Sometimes also one party may resort to delaying tactics for their own purpose. It could be the union, or it could be the management. Both parties play a kind of game too. So the conciliation officer very often has to step in and make sure that they play the game in a gentlemanly manner.

As we all know, the union's industrial relations officer has also to service its many branches. Therefore, meetings arranged for conciliation will have to be arranged in such a way to fit into his schedule, and that is another cause for delay. But as far as the Ministry is concerned, we are very interested in settling the dispute even on the spot, if we can do it.