1 Labor And Employment Arbitration § 3.01

Summary

The “informality of arbitral procedure,” the Supreme Court has observed, “enables it to function as an efficient, inexpensive, and expeditious means for dispute resolution.”1 When courts speak of arbitration’s informality, they mean that it is informal by comparison to litigation in state and federal courts.

Grievance arbitration, in reality, is a hybrid institution that has been shaped by two intertwined traditions: an informal labor relations tradition that has emerged through collective bargaining experience and a formal legal tradition that has been adapted from the Anglo-American common law and national labor legislation. While the arbitration forum is not as structured and legalistic as litigation in the courts and is in that sense informal, arbitration has well-defined procedures and substantive standards that are almost universally observed.2