Recommendations
on employment
problems in Tunisia

2.2 Applying non-adversarial tripartite social dialogue

Guideline for employment problems / RESOLVING: 2.2 Applying non-adversarial tripartite social dialogue

Most plausible interventions

During the orientation process of the available literature, we identified the following interventions as most plausible in unfair employment benefits in the service sector disputes:

Tripartism is one of the main forms of social dialogue. It can be defined as “the interaction of government, employers and workers (through their representatives) as equal and independent partners to seek solutions to issues of common concern” ^[1]. In other words, tripartism refers to the involvement of employers and workers’ organisations, alongside the government, on an equal footing, in decision-making ^[2].

According to the ILO, tripartism fully involves the government as one of the three partners in the consultations/negotiations. Tripartism in this sense should therefore not be mixed with another form of dialogue between three partners often referred to as ‘civil dialogue’. Civil dialogue involves representatives of workers and employers’ organisations along with a selection of civic and social interest groups (i.e. not with the government) ^[3].

Moreover, tripartite social dialogue can be distinguished from bipartite social dialogue where two parties – one or more employers and/or one or more employers’ organisations and one or more workers’ organisations – exchange information, consult each other or negotiate together, without government intervention. A particular form of bipartite social dialogue is collective bargaining ^[4].

In shaping the framework of national tripartite social dialogue, parties have three options:

A forum for exchange of information, which is the simplest form of social dialogue. It only implies a certain degree of confidence between the parties.
A forum for consultation, which implies an exchange of views to discuss a proposal or to test a policy option; it may result in one party reconsidering its position.
A forum for negotiation, which implies discussions between parties with differing or conflicting interests, with a view to reaching an agreement. Negotiation is the most formal and binding form of social dialogue and is mostly institutionalised.

The process of social dialogue can be either informal and ad hoc, or formal and institutionalised. The precise process to be selected will depend on the subject matter, the degree of urgency and other national circumstances ^[5].

Voluntary turnover could be defined as a number of employees leaving an organisation either for personal reasons or due to some dissatisfactions in the workplace ^[6]. Workers may express discontent through turnover in the case where collective ‘voice’ and strikes are prohibited or tightly regulated ^[7].

Indeed, turnover intentions exit-voice theorists argue that when employees are dissatisfied at work, they may either voice a concern or quit ^[8]. Also, disputes related to employment conditions and supervisory decisions are independently associated with a stronger intention to quit ^[9].

Moreover, employees’ perceptions of organisational justice have a strong effect on employees’ turnover intentions. If employees perceive that their organisation is fair in its procedures and distribution of resources to its employees, they tend to remain with their organisations ^[10].

Social dialogue is the most commonly used intervention in resolving unfair employment benefits disputes. On the other hand, voluntary turnover is less used and totally contrary to social dialogue. This contradiction is what makes the comparison between these two interventions interesting.

PICO question

For parties to an unfair employment benefit dispute in the service sector, is social dialogue or voluntary turnover more effective for well-being?

Search strategy

The databases used are: ILO, JSTOR, ResearchGate, Wiley Online Library, E-Journal of International and Comparative LABOUR STUDIES, Dutch Employers’ Cooperation Programme.

For this PICO question, keywords used in the search strategy are: labour turnover, voluntary turnover, social dialogue, dispute resolution, tripartite social dialogue.

Assessment and grading of evidence

The main sources of evidence used for this particular subject are:

Minawa Ebisui, Non-Standard Workers: Good Practices of Social Dialogue and Collective Bargaining, International Labour Office, 2012.
Ronald Janssen, A Business Case for Social Dialogue: How Workplace Representation and Collective Bargaining Deliver Better Business Performance, The Global Deal, 2021.
National Tripartite Social Dialogue: An ILO Guide for Improved Governance, International Labour Organization, 2013.
Damian Grimshaw, Aristea Koukiadaki, and Isabel Tavora, Social Dialogue and Economic Performance: What Matters for Business - A Review, International Labour Office, 2017.
A. Sivananthiran and C.S. Venkata Ratnam, Best Practices in Social Dialogue, International Labour Office, 2003.
Juliane Bir, The European Social Dialogue, ETUI, 2019.
Abolade Dupe Adesubomi, Impact of Employees’ Job Insecurity and Employee Turnover on Organisational Performance in Private and Public Sector Organisations, Studies in Business and Economics, 13(2), 2018.
Van Gramberg, Swinburne, Julian Teicher, Greg J. Bamber, and Brian Cooper, Voice, Intention to Quit, and Conflict Resolution: Evidence from Australia, Cornell University, 2019.
Van Gramberg, Swinburne, Julian Teicher, Greg J. Bamber, and Brian Cooper, A Changing World of Workplace Conflict Resolution and Employee Voice: An Australian Perspective, Cornell University, 2017.
Mariam Farooq and Omer Farooq, Organisational Justice, Employee Turnover, and Trust in the Workplace: A Study in South Asia Telecommunication Companies.
Rich Jones, Collective Bargaining Can Reduce Turnover and Improve Public Services in Colorado, Economic Analysis and Research Network, 2019.
Walid Abdullah Al-Suraihi, Siti Aida Samikon, Al-Hussain Abdullah Al-Suraihi, and Ishaq Ibrahim, Employee Turnover: Causes, Importance, and Retention Strategies, European Journal for Business and Management Research, 2021.
Chowdhury Abdullah Al Mamun and Md. Nazmul Hasan, Factors Affecting Employee Turnover and Sound Retention Strategies in Business Organisations: A Conceptual View, Problems and Perspectives in Management, 2017.
Sharpen Project, Employee Turnover, Output 1, Module 5
Eurofound, Working Conditions and Social Dialogue: Conference Report, 2019.
Eurofound, Challenges and Opportunities for Social Dialogue and Tripartism: Conference Report, 2002.
Gwenael Piaser, Social Dialogue, Decent Work, and Inclusive Growth: National Social Dialogue for Peaceful and Democratic Transition in Tunisia, Global Deal, 2019.
Abada Mahjoubi, Diagnostic Report on Social Dialogue and Collective Bargaining in Tunisia, 2016.

Minawa Ebisui provides in her study a comparative synthesis analysis of a series of national studies on nonstandard work, collective bargaining and social dialogue in selected countries. She identified a variety of approaches and strategies where collective bargaining, and tripartite social dialogue have been addressing employees’ needs and interests and improving non-standard workers’ terms and conditions of work and their status.

Ronald Janssen in his thematic briefing has presented results from a range of empirical research examining the impact of worker representation at the workplace on business performance. It finds that such worker representation and the processes of social dialogue that go with it such as bipartite social dialogue, collective bargaining and workplace cooperation, offer much potential to contribute to business performance.

Damian Grimshaw, Aristea Koukiadaki and Isabel Tavora have provided in their report a state-of-the-art review of academic research as well as a snapshot of real-world views of members of the international business community on how social dialogue contributes to business growth. They studied the benefits of social dialogue in the workplace as well as in resolving employment conflicts.
А. Sivananthiran C.S. Venkata Ratnam in their report collected the multiple best practices of social dialogue in different countries. The analysis is supported by study cases tackling different issues showing the effectiveness of social dialogue as a tool in preventing and settling employment disputes.

In chapter 4 of The future of Europe, Juliane Bir examines the method and outcomes of the European social dialogue on employees and labour market.

Rich Jones in his study case on Colorado showed how the growing rate of employee’s turnover has put a pressure on the state government to resolve their problems and how they ended up settling the dispute by negotiating and collective bargaining.

Van Gramberg Swinburne, Julian Teicher, Greg J. Bamber and Brian Cooper are pioneers regarding their research on turnover and dispute resolution. They conducted consecutive paper studies studying the relation between the intention to quit and employment problem resolution, in which they contributed to dispute resolution theory and provided new insights on such important issues. They conducted and analysed a survey of managers in Australian workplaces. They also provided recommendations for improving workplace dispute resolution that they believe offer mutual gains for stakeholders.

Abolade Dupe Adesubomi in his paper study investigates the relationship between job insecurity and organisation performance, as well as the relationship between job insecurity and employee turnover. The data were analysed, and the two hypotheses drawn up for the study were tested using Pearson product-moment correlation. The findings establish that job insecurity negatively affects organisation performance and induces employee turnover.

Walid Abdullah Al-Suraihi, Siti Aida Samikon, Al-Hussain Abdullah Al-Suraihi and Ishaq Ibrahim studied the causes of employee turnover and retention strategies in an organisation. Their key research findings indicate that employees have several reasons to leave their workplaces, such as job satisfaction, job security and wages. Furthermore, employee turnover has a huge impact on an organisation due to the costs associated with employee turnover and can negatively impact the productivity, sustainability, competitiveness, and profitability of an organisation. Thus, implementing strategies will increase job satisfaction, motivation and the productivity of individuals and organisations, which can reduce employment problems, absenteeism, and employee turnover.

The report provided by Eurofound is the summary of the presentations and discussions which took place at the conference Tripartism in an enlarged European Union, in Elsinore on 29th and 30th October 2002. The conference contributed to the theme of ‘social inclusion through social dialogue’ where it reviewed the present state of tripartism in the European Union and discussed the challenges it will face in an enlarged Union.

А. Mahjoubi provides an analytical study on the structure of social dialogue and collective bargaining in Tunisia. He examined the different relevant actors (private and public) practising social dialogue on the field. He also studied the impact of social dialogue in Tunisia on multiple levels (national sector and company) to come up with results of the different social dialogues types conducted.

Quality of evidence and research gap

According to our research method, we grade the evidence comparing tripartite social dialogue and voluntary turnover as moderate. The sources used to compare are medium-sized or large empirical studies. But a risk of true effects reported being different in other countries, resulting in downgrading of the evidence by one level.

A significant research gap is noticeable in containing unfair employment benefits in the service sector. Very limited evidence is available focusing on voluntary turnover. Most literature focuses on interventions that are based on negotiation and consultation to resolve the unfair employment benefits dispute.

Recommendation

Desirable outcomes

Tripartite social dialogue	Voluntary turnover
Tripartite social dialogue has a critical role to play in advancing more inclusive and equitable social dialogue as well as democratic labour market governance, through designing and agreeing on policies or legislative changes based on mutual consensus. The outcomes of tripartite social dialogue can also take other forms, such as non-binding declarations, guidelines or agreements ^[11]. For example, European social dialogue led to the implementation, by means of council directives, of three framework agreements (on parental leave in 1996, revised in 2009; on part-time work in 1997; and on fixed-term work in 1999) ^[12].	The rise of turnover can put pressure on employers and the state to act and resolve the problem. Taking Colorado as an example where there has been a growing problem with increasing employee turnover since 2009, resulted in costing the state tens of millions of dollars annually and diminishing in the quality of public services ^[22]. The major factors driving high turnover are state employees’ lower pay and modest benefits as mentioned in Colorado’s annual compensation report ^[23]. The state finds itself forced to bargain with employees and adjust the situation.
By establishing a space for collective association, social dialogue helps ensure that employers’ organisations have their voice heard in policy debates and labour reforms. Thus, ensuring an enabling environment for the development of small and medium businesses ^[13]. At firm, sectoral and national levels, social dialogue has the potential to stabilise industrial relations and support productivity growth, combined with contributing to both the preservation of firm-specific knowledge and organisational capital (through, for instance, skill development and employee retention) and sustainable business responses, ensuring economic stability. At the level of inter-firm contracting, social dialogue can contribute to productivity growth via the stabilisation of contractual relations, coordinated skill development, a reduction of the risk of industrial relations disputes and improvement in brand reputation ^[14].
Social dialogue establishes an important risk mitigation function ^[15] by absorbing shocks and preserving jobs, improving investment in human capital and productivity while offsetting the risks in global supply chains ^[16]. Also, in managing conflict and strengthening the prospects for industrial relations peace, and thereby contributes to sustaining stable business operations ^[17].
Social dialogue promotes collective learning which can help address and resolve collective action problems. This may be through sharing of information that addresses issues of information asymmetry that may exist at organisational level ^[18].
Social dialogue embodies the potential for social actors to build long-term trusting relations. Through the routinized processes of effective social dialogue, parties identify interests in common and in conflict and devise actions and strategies in line with agreed rules (formal and informal). Agreed rules and principles of dialogue facilitate the negotiation of trade-offs and compromises and, in situations where parties abide by the agreements, enhance the degree of cooperation between the agreed parties ^[19].
In an extremely challenging environment of political and social instability, social dialogue can play a key role in reducing political tensions, this was the case for Tunisia where the Tunisian union of industry, commerce and handicrafts and the Tunisian general labour union together with two companies of the civil society (the Tunisian human rights league and the Tunisian order of lawyers) under the name of the national dialogue quartet made a unique initiative that helped the country to achieve the first stage of democratic transition ^[20].
Moreover, in order to improve the conduct of social dialogue in Tunisia and to ensure better social dialogue outcomes, the government has adopted a law in 2017 establishing the national council for social dialogue and determined its mandate and operational modalities. The creation of this tripartite body sought to anchor dialogue between social partners and created an enabling framework allowing it to go beyond one-off discussions of specific issues and become a constant and permanent model for decision-making. According to articles 2 and 3 of the law, the council is responsible for organising and managing social dialogue on social and economic issues of common interest for the social partners. It allows workers’ and employers’ organisations to participate in the debate on national issues, contribute to the development of sectoral policies and promote the economic and social development model ^[21].

Undesirable outcomes

Tripartite social dialogue	Voluntary turnover
National factors can highly affect the social dialogue structure, domestic political factors can influence the debate on the structures and legitimacy of the tripartite model. Also, the representativeness of the social partners, and degrees of mutual trust can determine the shape and format of agreements ^[24].	One of the significant effects of turnover is to increase cost due to recruiting and training new employees. In a small business for exp, the owner himself might have to train new employees ^[27].
Social dialogue can be forged sometimes, the requirements to meet accession criteria in both economic and social spheres have led many candidate countries to develop and establish bipartite and tripartite models of social dialogue in order to fulfil their obligations under [international standards] and ILO conventions ^[25].	Also, lost labour between the time the individual quits and a replacement, lost productivity while departing employees and reduced productivity of the new hire while learning the job ^[28].
The non-consultation of social partners, in many countries, the social partners are directly involved in and consulted about the formulation of new legislation in the social policy field. However, the process does not always run smoothly and even if consultations take place, the social partners are sometimes frustrated by the fact that the government does not subsequently take their views on board when drafting the legislation. This was the case in Romania, for example, during the drafting of new health and safety legislation: although the social partners had signed a joint protocol and submitted proposals through the appropriate consultation channels, the government did not include their proposals in the new law. Also, a malfunctioning or breakdown of social dialogue structures leads to the failure of social dialogue. An example from Ireland, a partnership agreement ultimately failed because neither the management nor trade union side had faith in the initiative ^[26].	High turnover may lead a firm to generate less profit, evidence for this is provided by the Harvard business school, when businesses experience higher turnover, they will get lower profit margins ^[29].
	Organisations with high levels of employee turnover contribute to job insecurity [which is undesirable for employees] and this affects the image of that organisation negatively ^[30].
	Voluntary employee turnover is generally considered as a negative event for small organisations because it may be that most of the small firm’s assets reside in human capital. This means that when employees leave, the business could be losing some of the attributes on which it trades. This, in turn, creates a vicious cycle among employees resulting in low productivity or no result orientation ^[31].

Balance of Outcomes

Taken together, the available research suggests that tripartite social dialogue is most efficient in resolving and preventing unfair employment benefits disputes by establishing an important risk mitigation function and conflict management, promoting collective learning and helps ensure that employee voice is heard.

Tripartite social dialogue plays a prominent role in advancing a democratic labour market governance and building long-term trusting relations with the social actors.

Voluntary turnover on the other hand is a result of the dissatisfaction of an employee in his workplace and which he chooses to avoid resolving the problem and take a passive action instead of communicating and negotiating about it.

Voluntary turnover can put pressure to solve unfair employment benefits disputes due to its negative consequences on the organisation, but literature has shown that it seldom succeeds.

The desirable outcomes of tripartite social dialogue outweigh those of voluntary turnover, and the undesirable outcomes of voluntary turnover outweigh those of tripartite social dialogue. Therefore, tripartite social dialogue is preferred.

Recommendation

Taking into account the balance of outcomes, the benefits for parties to an unfair employment benefit disputes, and the quality and consistency of the evidence, we make the following recommendation: for parties to an unfair employment benefit disputes, tripartite social dialogue is more conducive to well-being than voluntary turnover.

View References

^[1] ILO Thesaurus.

^[2] National Tripartite Social Dialogue: An ILO Guide for Improved Governance. Organisation internationale du travail, 2013, p. 13.

^[3] Ibid., p. 15.

^[4] Ibid., p. 17.

^[5] Ibid., p. 24.

^[6] Abolade Dupe, A. (2018). Impact of Employees’ Job Insecurity and Employee Turnover on Organisational Performance in Private and Public Sector Organisations. Studies in Business and Economics, 13(2), p. 3.

^[7-8] Van Gramberg, B., Teicher, J., Bamber, G. J., & Cooper, B. (2017). A Changing World of Workplace Conflict Resolution and Employee Voice: An Australian Perspective. Cornell University, p. 4.

^[9] Van Gramberg, B., Teicher, J., Bamber, G. J., & Cooper, B. (2019). Voice, Intention to Quit, and Conflict Resolution: Evidence from Australia. Cornell University, p. 3.

^[10] Farooq, M., & Farooq, O. Organisational Justice, Employee Turnover, and Trust in the Workplace: A Study in South Asia Telecommunication Companies, pp. 57-58.

^[11] Ebisui, M. (2012). Non-Standard Workers: Good Practices of Social Dialogue and Collective Bargaining. Bureau international du travail, p. 238.

^[12] Bir, J. (2019). The European Social Dialogue. ETUI, p. 78.

^[13-15] Grimshaw, D., Koukiadaki, A., & Tavora, I. (2017). Social Dialogue and Economic Performance: What Matters for Business – A Review. Bureau international du travail, pp. 2, 8.

^[16] Janssen, R. (2021). A Business Case for Social Dialogue: How Workplace Representation and Collective Bargaining Deliver Better Business Performance. The Global Deal, p. 1.

^[17-19] Op. cit., réf. [13], pp. 8-9.

^[20] Mahjoubi, A. (2016). Diagnostic Report on Social Dialogue and Collective Bargaining in Tunisia, p. 21.

^[21] Piaser, G. (2019). Social Dialogue, Decent Work, and Inclusive Growth: National Social Dialogue for Peaceful and Democratic Transition in Tunisia. Global Deal, p. 5.

^[12-23] Rich, J. (2019). Collective Bargaining Can Reduce Turnover and Improve Public Services in Colorado. Economic Analysis and Research Network, pp. 3-4.

^[24-26] Eurofound (2002 & 2019). Challenges and Opportunities for Social Dialogue and Tripartism: Working Conditions and Social Dialogue: Conference Report, pp. 11, 30.

^[27] Chowdhury, A. M., & Nazmul, H. (2017). Factors Affecting Employee Turnover and Sound Retention Strategies in Business Organisations: A Conceptual View. Problems and Perspectives in Management, p. 64.

^[28] Al-Suraihi, W. A., Samikon, S. S., Al-Suraihi, A. H., & Ibrahim, I. (2021). Employee Turnover: Causes, Importance, and Retention Strategies. European Journal for Business and Management Research, p. 2.

^[29] Op. cit., réf. [27], p. 64.

^[30] Op. cit., réf. [6], p. 3.

^[31] Sharpen Project, Employee Turnover, Output 1, Module 5, p. 5.