The Agency for Peaceful Resolution of Labor Disputes is currently working on 3.730 cases, and in two months, from the beginning of December 2023 to the end of January 2024, it received about 20.000 cases.
As they told "Vijesti", 68 conciliators currently work in this institution, of which 40 are active.
Another institution for resolving disputes before the court, the Center for Alternative Dispute Resolution, is currently working on more than 20.000 cases, and they started with proposals for starting mediation and those submitted by the competent courts, while 230 licensed mediators deal with this work. This Center also confirmed to the "News" that at the end of last year, they received more than 10.000 cases related to labor claims.
A large number of cases and proposals for collection poured into these institutions at the end of last year, due to changes in the Labor Law. Specifically, as of January 7 of this year, all employee claims - less calculated and paid wages, unpaid vacations, less calculated initial parts of wages, unpaid vacation leave, winter holidays, night work and the like, which arose from August 23, 2008 to January 7, 2020, except for pension insurance contributions.
The agency deals with free out-of-court settlement of collective and individual labor disputes, and was founded by the Government before 2010. With the adoption of the Law on Alternative Dispute Resolution in July 2020, the former Center for Mediation was transformed into the Center for Alternative Dispute Resolution, and deals with mediation and other methods of dispute resolution.
These institutions were partly formed in order to reduce the workload for domestic courts. That is, no court case from these areas can start as a court case, if a peaceful resolution of the case before one of these two institutions has not been attempted beforehand.
Both institutions are financed from the budget, that is, those who want to resolve the dispute peacefully do not have additional costs.
Since December, they have solved a quarter of the work
"There are currently 3.730 cases pending in the Agency for the Peaceful Resolution of Labor Disputes, from the beginning of December 2023 to the end of January 2024, about 20.000 proposals have been received. The Agency has 68 conciliators registered in the Directory, of which about 40 are active, who take on cases every day. Regarding the number of conciliators for dealing with cases, we believe that the number is sufficient to perform their duties. Speaking about the period of submitted proposals from December until today, about 25 percent of the cases have been successfully resolved in the Agency, the conciliation procedure is defined by the Law on Peaceful Resolution of Labor Disputes and that is 30 days from the date of receipt of the case, with the fact that the deadline can be extended at the request of the parties to the procedure , bearing in mind the complexity of the case", said the Agency.
The Center for Alternative Dispute Resolution explained to "Vijesta" that according to Article 12 of the Law on Alternative Dispute Resolution, those who want to litigate must contact the Center before starting it and try to resolve the dispute through mediation. This, as they stated, is provided for in small value disputes, those from insurance and in cases where it is prescribed by a special law.
They also pointed out that according to the amendments to the Law on Civil Procedure from 2020, judges must submit files to the Center in order to organize the first meeting with the mediator in proceedings in which the state, the capital, the capital, the municipality is sued, and in commercial disputes.
"There are currently more than 20.000 cases pending before the Center, initiated by proposals to initiate the mediation procedure and submitted by the competent courts. This is a significantly higher number of received requests compared to previous periods. The aforementioned provisions led to the influx of a huge number of cases referred to mediation and it can be determined with certainty that they helped the professional and lay public to become familiar with the mediation process itself and the advantages of resolving disputes this way. One of the main reasons that led to an enormous increase in the number of cases in the fourth quarter of 2023 compared to the period from 2020 to 2023, and which will reflect on the work of the Center in 2024, is the statute of limitations on monetary claims from employment relationships. During that period, in just a few days, more than 10.000 proposals were submitted to the Center related to labor and work-based claims (submission of proposals to the Center breaks the statute of limitations)", the Center stated.
Few mediators in smaller towns
They pointed out that there are 230 licensed mediators in Montenegro, which, they claim, are quite sufficient for the influx of cases that the Center has. They added that the largest number of mediators is in Podgorica, while only a few of them are licensed in smaller municipalities, so that number should be increased, as well as planning the basic training of future mediators with the relevant ministry.
"The percentage of positively concluded cases before the Center is a relative category, due to the fact that in some types of disputes the percentage of successful parties agreeing is around 90 percent, while in some others that percentage is lower. When taking into account the preventive role of the mediation procedure (a situation where no settlement was concluded, but the parties discussed the disputed relationship and the litigation procedure was abandoned in the future), it becomes clearer why the mere statistics of "resolved" cases cannot be a relevant indicator of the role of mediation in society in general", they pointed out from the Center.
If there is a firm intention, the dispute is quickly resolved
As the Center says, the length of the mediation process is influenced by several factors that depend on the type of dispute and those who participate, but also that some end extremely quickly. They added that this happens in cases where the parties to the dispute take an active role and come with a firm intention to resolve it through mediation and work together to reach a settlement.
Disputes that last significantly longer, as they say, are those in which, for objective reasons, the dispute cannot be resolved efficiently. They pointed out that the length of the procedure is also affected by the passage of time, from the moment of conclusion of the settlement (end of the mediation procedure) until its certification by the court.
They also emphasized that they have good cooperation with all the courts in Montenegro and that they are an immeasurable contribution to the development of mediation, through the settlement verification procedure. This, as they claim, is confirmed by the fact that mediators use the premises of basic courts in all municipalities unhindered.
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