Collectives Bargaining Collective agreements are agreements that cover two or more employees who are union members.

Only registered unions and employers can bargain for collective agreements. If you are involved in bargaining for a collective agreement, you will need to check that you follow the correct procedures. The Employment Relations Act 2000 requires employers and unions to bargain in good faith over collective agreements. This includes requirements to meet, and to consider and respond to each other's proposals. It also means that employers and unions must conclude a collective agreement unless there is a genuine reason based on reasonable grounds not to conclude the agreement. Who needs this information? Anyone who has a paid job or who employs other people in paid work Employers, employees and unions negotiating new collective employment agreements Anyone who wants to know what can be included in collective employment agreements Anyone who wants to know about when collective agreements expire Anyone who wants to find out about sending in a copy of their collective agreement to the Department of Labour Anyone who wants to know about their rights and obligations regarding strikes and lockouts. OR Collective Bargaining is the process whereby workers organize together to meet, converse, and compromise upon the work environment with their employers. It is the practice in which union and company representatives meet to negotiate a new labor contract. [1] In various national labor and employment law contexts, collective bargaining takes on a more specific legal meaning. In a broad sense, however, it is the coming together of workers to negotiate their employment. A collective agreement is a labor contract between an employer and one or more unions. Collective bargaining consists of the process of negotiation between representatives of a union and employers (represented by management, in some countries by employers' organization) in respect of the terms and conditions of employment of employees, such as wages, hours of work, working conditions and grievance-procedures, and about the rights and responsibilities of trade unions. The parties often refer to the result of the negotiation as a Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) or as a Collective Employment Agreement (CEA). Theories A number of theories from the fields of industrial relations, economics, political science, history and sociology (as well as the writings of activists, workers and labor organizations) have attempted to define and explain collective bargaining. One theory suggests that collective bargaining is a human right and thus deserving of legal protection. Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights identifies the ability to organise trade unions as a fundamental human right. Item 2(a) of the International Labor Organization'sDeclaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work defines the "freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining" as an essential right of workers. In June 2007 the Supreme Court of Canada extensively

reviewed the rationale for considering collective bargaining to be a human right. In the case of Facilities Subsector Bargaining Assn. v. British Columbia, the Court made the following observations: The right to bargain collectively with an employer enhances the human dignity, liberty and autonomy of workers by giving them the opportunity to influence the establishment of workplace rules and thereby gain some control over a major aspect of their lives, namely their work. Collective bargaining is not simply an instrument for pursuing external endsrather [it] is intrinsically valuable as an experience in self-government. Collective bargaining permits workers to achieve a form of workplace democracy and to ensure the rule of law in the workplace. Workers gain a voice to influence the establishment of rules that control a major aspect of their lives. Economic theories also provide a number of models intended to explain some aspects of collective bargaining. The first is the so-called Monopoly Union Model (Dunlop, 1944), according to which the monopoly union has the power to maximise the wage rate; the firm then chooses the level of employment. This model is being abandoned by the recent literature.The second is the Right-to-Manage model, developed by the British school during the 1980s ( Nickell). In this model, the labour union and the firm bargain over the wage rate according to a typical Nash Bargaining Maximin (written as = U 1-, where U is the utility function of the labour union, the profit of the firm and represents the bargaining power of the labour unions). The third model is called efficient bargaining (McDonald and Solow, 1981), where the union and the firm bargain over both wages and employment (or, more realistically, hours of work).