10.2190/9Q7Y-K56K-WJCN-G2TJ 9Q7YK56KWJCNG2TJ 2 A Comparative Survey of Private Sector and Public Sector Arbitration Cases 281 280 20020509 20020509 20020509 20020509 9Q7YK56KWJCNG2TJ.pdf http://baywood.metapress.com/link.asp?target=contribution&id=9Q7YK56KWJCNG2TJ 4 Lawrence J. Haber Ahmad R. Karim J. Douglas Johnson Indiana-Purdue University, Fort Wayne Rather than examining arbitrator behavior in a single category of cases, this inquiry examines arbitrator behavior across a wide range of cases in both the public and the private sector. Published awards between 1990 and 1995 are categorized using <i>LAR</i> numbers so that the classification scheme should be reproducible. Inspection of the relative caseload and the union win rates reveals some notable differences between the public and the private sector. The caseload in the private sector is concentrated on basic job security issues, whereas in the public sector the awards are concentrated on issues concerning wages and hours or other conditions of employment. Unexpectedly, the union win rates in the public sector were higher than in the private sector in six of eight categories of cases. A. Karim and T. Stone, An Empirical Examination of Arbitration Considerations in Reversal and Reduction Discharge Cases, <i>Labor Studies Journal, 13</i>:2, pp. 41-50, 1988. A. Karim, Arbitrator Considerations in Modifying Discharge Decisions in the Public Sector, <i>Journal of Collective Negotiations in the Public Sector, 22</i>:3, pp. 245-251, 1993. K. Thornicroft, Arbitrators and Substance Abuse Discharge Grievances: An Empirical Assessment, <i>Labor Studies Journal, 14</i>:4, pp. 40-65, 1989. S. Crow, E. Stephens, and W. Sharpe, A New Approach to Decision Making Research in Labor Arbitration, <i>Labor Studies Journal, 14</i>:4, pp. 3-18, 1992. A. Karim and L. Haber, Arbitrator Decision Making in Substance-Abuse Cases, <i>Journal of Individual Employment Rights, 6</i>:1, pp. 29-39, 1997. H. Lavan, Arbitration of Sexual Harassment Disputes: Case Characteristics and Case Outcomes in Public Versus Private Sector Cases, <i>Journal of Collective Negotiations in the Public Sector, 22</i>:1, pp. 45-53, 1993. L. J. Haber, A. Karim, and J. D. Johnson, A Survey of Published, Private-Sector Arbitral Decisions, <i>Labor Law Journal, 48</i>:7, pp. 431-436, 1997. (Note that the classification categories and the results for the private sector included here are drawn from that paper. D. A. Dilts and E. C. Leonard, Win-Loss Rates in Public Sector Grievance Arbitration Cases: Implications for the Selection of Arbitrators, <i>Journal of Collective Negotiations in the Public Sector, 18</i>:4, pp. 337-344, 1989. D. A. Dilts and C. R. Deitsch, Arbitration Win/Loss Rates as a Measure of Arbitrator Neutrality, <i>Arbitration Journal, 44</i>:3, pp. 42-47, 1989. A small proportion of the published awards was omitted from the sample for several reasons. The most common omissions were cases in which unions contested other unions, usually in matters dealing with the right to organize. One should note that the category containing discharge cases and that containing other discipline cases have overlapping <i>LAR</i> numbers in both the public and the private sector. Yet, it is sufficiently clear from the context of each case whether that case involves discharge of an employee, and therefore this overlap poses little threat to the reproducibility of the data set as a whole. As most authors have done, split awards are counted as union wins. For an award to be counted as a management win, management's actions must be upheld in their entirety. S. Siegel, <i>Nonparametric Statistics</i>, McGraw-Hill, New York, pp. 127-136, 279, 1956. J. L. Kenkel, <i>Introductory Statistics for Management and Economics</i>, Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, Boston, pp. 334-335, 1981. It was surprising that none of the differences in win rates proved statistically significant in view of the relatively large differences between private and public sector win rates (as much as 12.6 percent) and the large sample size.