This article offers suggestions on how labour and management can deal effectively with conflict. It is an excerpt from a speech given at the First Annual Labour Arbitration Conference, Toronto, Ontario, October 31, 1997.

We are in a period of profound change. The combination of new technology, global trade and recurring recessions has resulted in the demise of many Canadian workplaces and the restructuring and re-engineering of many others. Today’s watchwords have become ‘flexibility’ and ‘competitiveness.’ There have been many casualties. Older workers who have lost their jobs have not easily found alternative employment. Where work has been found, it is seldom comparable in content or remuneration to what was lost. Younger workers have also been adversely affected. Caught by surprise, they too often lack the skills required in the new economy. They therefore find themselves lining up to apply for the fewer assembly and unskilled jobs that remain or for work in the service sector which pays considerably less and for which they must compete with their elders who are now unemployed. Increased structural unemployment in the double digit range has been the result.