5.2 Collective Bargaining

The concept: the negotiation of the terms of employment by the workers' collective (the union) with the employer — the self-government of the workplace (the industrial democracy's instrument; the freedom-of-association's exercise — the ILO C98's core). The machinery (the process's ladder): The bargaining agent's certification — the union's majority (the exclusive-agent's determination: the recognised union's right to bargain for all); The demands' presentation — the charter's submission (the claims' articulation: the wages, the conditions, the relations); The negotiation's duty — the good-faith requirement (the refusal-to-bargain as the unfair practice; the meetings, the justifications, the counterproposals); The agreement's conclusion — the collective agreement (the terms' writing; the registration; the binding force); the agreement's content (the wages, the hours, the benefits, the grievance machinery, the discipline's procedures); the term's duration and the no-strike peace; The enforcement — the agreement's binding force (the contractual-and-statutory faces); the grievance machinery's internal enforcement; the disputes' reference to the conciliation-and- adjudication. The bargaining's scope: the wages-and-conditions-and-relations — the managerial rights' perimeter (the business's core decisions beyond the mandatory bargaining, within the law's lines).