Harmonisation of ASEAN labour laws on disputes settlement: the Philippines and Malaysia as case studies

Exploring the possibility of harmonising labour laws and regulations governing disputes settlement across ASEAN, this thesis focuses attention on two member states — the Philippines and Malaysia — and draws implications from this two-country study for potential harmonisation across the regional organisation more broadly. These two countries provide a microcosm of issues relating to harmonisation because they have both experienced colonisation by more than one foreign power at different and rather long periods of time. Their respective histories have produced highly pluralist and heterogeneous labour law systems, which encapsulate the complex range of factors likely to support or prevent harmonisation. Through a sequential exploratory mixed-methods design, this thesis develops case studies of the labour laws and regulations on disputes settlement in the Philippines and Malaysia and compares the cases for similarities and differences, convergences and divergences. In spite of their entanglements and connections in terms of colonial experiences, civil law and common law institutions, the cases of the Philippines and Malaysia disclose more differences and divergences than similarities and convergences as to inter-party labour standards and labour relations disputes, voluntary dispute management and dispute resolution modes, and compulsory dispute management and dispute resolution mechanisms. Not only are there more differences in dispute forms and dispute settlement mechanisms between the two cases at a particular point in time, more divergences between them have been occurring over time. These suggest that the path to harmonisation or transplantation of labour laws and regulations on disputes settlement in ASEAN is arduous, long and complex. The differences and divergences constitute critical stumbling blocks to harmonisation or transplantation of such laws and regulations within the region. If harmonisation of labour laws and regulations on disputes settlement will be hard to achieve in the Philippines and Malaysia, then it will be hard to achieve across the larger ASEAN region.