Access to justice in labour disputes through mediation and conciliation

The overall objective of the project is fair, fast and inclusive access to justice in labour disputes for all, including vulnerable categories of workers (youth, old, informal, women, low skilled). The intervention strategy focuses on the following outcomes: 1) increased effectiveness of labour dispute mediation and conciliation services, 2) increased use of alternative resolution of labour disputes by workers, employers and their organizations; 3) increased application of international labour standards by national judges dealing with labour litigations; 4) dispute prevention policies developed and introduced at enterprise level; and 5) improved negotiations and dispute prevention skills of would be workers and employers. Albania has made efforts to improve the system of prevention and out of court resolution of labour disputes, however several legal and practical challenges of the existing system limit its effectiveness, use and outreach. The project supports the Albanian stakeholders (government, social partners, National Labour Council, labour dispute mediators and conciliators and other relevant dispute resolution institutions, including the judiciary) to revisit the current system and devise measures to increase its effectiveness and outreach. The project also builds the capacity of the government and the social partners to operationalize an independent, impartial, free of charge, and speedy extra-judicial mechanism for labour dispute resolution and create a specialized corpus of labour mediators, conciliators and arbitrators. Furthermore, it assists the Government and the social partners to promote the advantages of amicable settlement of labour disputes and improve negotiation and dispute prevention skills of would be workers and employers. At the same time, the project enhances the knowledge and application of international labour standards by national judges handling labour disputes. Gender equality, non-discrimination and workplace harassment policies and measures are cross-cutting the project goals and activities so as to advance workplace equality between men and women through social dialogue. The project is aligned with the second priority of the 2017–2021 Decent Work Country Programme for Albania and the third outcome of the 2017–2021 One UN Programme of Cooperation for Sustainable Development and it contributes toward the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 8.

Project symbol

ALB/18/03/SWE

Admin unit

DWT/CO-Budapest

Start date

01/09/2019

End date

31/08/2023

Total allocation

1216897

Total expenditure

Status

Closed

1196695

Development Partners

Sweden, Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency

Country/Countries

Albania

Outcomes

Outcome 2: Strong, representative and influential tripartite constituents and effective social dialogue