About the Dispute Prevention and Relationship Development Program
This program is a service that the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS) provides to unions and employers under federal jurisdiction.
The aim of this program is to help prevent and better manage labour disputes and day-to-day workplace conflict. It also helps develop and maintain collaborative working relations.
The overall goals of this program are to aid the parties:
- resolve workplace issues during the life of the agreement to avoid having to address them at the next round of collective bargaining
- help improve their labour-management relationship
- promote cooperative workplace relations
- engage in the collective bargaining process with greater effectiveness and confidence
Services
This program offers the following services:
Grievance mediation
Grievance mediation aims to resolve grievances during the term of the agreement as an alternative to arbitration or waiting until collective bargaining.
This service offers parties an informal, low-cost alternative to grievance arbitration, which can be an adversarial and expensive process. It provides parties an opportunity to address grievances and their underlying issues under the guidance of an experienced and neutral FMCS mediator.
Facilitation of workplace issues, joint initiatives, and direct negotiations
FMCS mediators act as a neutral facilitator to help parties address workplace issues and engage in joint initiatives with greater ease and success. Examples include:
- the facilitation of discussions to resolve a workplace conflict
- joint committee meetings, and
- direct bargaining negotiations
Training workshops
Joint training workshops
FMCS offers joint training to unions and employers who wish to:
- foster collaborative labour relations, and
- develop their collective bargaining skills
Training topics include, but are not limited to the following:
- negotiations and collective bargaining
- communications and conflict resolution
- joint problem solving
- committee effectiveness
- grievance handling
- embracing change
We customize most workshops to meet your particular needs and objectives. We do customization further to a diagnostic of the relationship conducted by FMCS mediators.
Consult the joint training workshops page for the full training descriptions, learning objectives, and how to apply.
Regional public workshops
If joint customized workshops are not practical in your workplace, we also offer regional public workshops.
Page details
- Date modified: