AN ASSESSMENT OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF MEDIATION IN RESOLVING LABOUR DISPUTES INVOLVING INFORMAL SECTOR WORKERS IN TANZANIA

Abstract

This article critically examines the legal and institutional framework governing mediation as a mechanism for resolving labour disputes involving workers in Tanzania's informal economy. Although the informal sector accounts for the overwhelming majority of employment in Tanzania, the principal labour statutes governing dispute resolution were designed with the formal employment relationship in mind, structured around the presence of an identifiable employer, a contract of employment, and traceable terms of engagement. The Commission for Mediation and Arbitration (CMA), established under the Labour Institutions Act and operating pursuant to the Employment and Labour Relations Act, is the principal forum through which labour disputes are mediated in Tanzania, yet its procedural architecture presupposes precisely the kind of formal relationship that is frequently absent in informal work. Drawing on doctrinal analysis of the relevant statutes, subsidiary legislation and secondary literature, the article interrogates whether mediation, as presently structured, is capable of extending meaningful and enforceable protection to informal workers. It situates the Tanzanian position within regional and international scholarship on access to justice for informal workers and considers the extent to which recent institutional innovations, including the CMA's e-Utatuzi digital platform, respond to the accessibility gap. The article concludes that while mediation retains considerable normative promise for informal sector labour disputes, its practical effectiveness is constrained by definitional exclusion, weak enforcement mechanisms and limited institutional adaptation, and it proposes targeted legal and administrative reforms.