Arbitration Award Summaries

Does your city have a potential labor arbitration on the horizon? Then you may want to research similar cases.  The League’s Arbitration Award Summaries database can help you get started.

About arbitration

Arbitration is a process for resolving disputes outside of the court system. Most labor arbitrations fall within one of two broad categories. Interest arbitration is used when the parties are unable to negotiate a collective bargaining agreement (CBA). Grievance arbitration is used to resolve alleged violations of the CBA.

The Bureau of Mediation Services (BMS) oversees labor relations in Minnesota — both in the public and private sectors. The BMS helps mediate collective bargaining disputes and maintains a roster of neutral arbitrators — individuals appointed based upon their knowledge and experience in labor relations, collective bargaining, and arbitration.

About the LMC summaries

The League’s summaries offer a brief explanation of what happened in cases relevant to cities, so you can quickly find out the details without reading the full report. But if you need more details, you can access the award in the League’s Laserfiche database. While these awards are fact-specific, they can illustrate trends and may help anticipate how similar issues would be decided in the future.

The League has arbitration award summaries going back to December 2012. Awards prior to this time can be found on the BMS website.

Access full arbitration awards on the BMS website

Using the LMC database

The League Laserfiche database of arbitration award summaries is searchable by:

  • Arbitration type
  • Employee group
  • Arbitrator name
  • Date range
  • Employer
  • Party

To access the League database, you need to log in to your MyLMC account or create a new one.

Please note the League database is not an official government record archive and may not contain all arbitration awards.