With regard to collective bargaining on working time, she acknowledged that “one way or another, the issue of working time will continue to play an important role in collective bargaining; although decisive battles may take place in the legislative halls.” Collective bargaining imposes certain restrictions on the employer. Unilateral measures are prevented. All employees are treated equally. The conditions of employment and remuneration laid down in the agreement may be modified only by negotiations with the workers. The employer is not free to make and impose decisions according to his will. However, new contracts can be written to resolve the issues of the previous contract. In addition, in solving everyday problems, they set precedents for handling similar problems in the future. Such precedents are almost as important as the contract in controlling working conditions. In short, collective bargaining is not an on-and-off relationship maintained in the cold store, unless new contracts are being designed. Collective bargaining can only take place through trade unions. The unions are the negotiators for the workers.
The main task of trade unions is to protect the economic and non-economic interests of workers through constructive programmes and collective bargaining is one of the ways to achieve this objective by negotiating with employers. In Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, 584 U.S. __ (2018), the Supreme Court upheld arbitration agreements that prohibited workers from asserting labor-related rights on a collective or class basis. The tribunal decided that this was in accordance with the Arbitration Act (9 U.P. That is clear. ยง 2, 3, 4), which “oblige the courts to enforce arbitration agreements, including the terms of arbitration adopted by the parties”. Generally speaking, there are four important methods of collective bargaining, namely negotiation, mediation, conciliation and arbitration to resolve commercial disputes. In this context, R.F. Hoxie stated that arbitration proceedings are often provided for in collective bargaining under certain contingencies and for certain purposes, particularly when the parties fail to reach an agreement, and in the interpretation of an agreement by negotiation. The Office of Labor-Management Standards, part of the U.S.
Department of Labor, is required to collect all collective agreements for 1,000 or more workers, except those for railroads and airlines. [16] They provide public access to these collections through their website. The most important collective bargaining law is the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). It is also called the Wagner Law. It expressly grants employees the right to negotiate collective agreements and to join trade unions. The NLRA was originally passed in 1935 by Congress as part of its power to regulate intergovernmental trade pursuant to the trade clause in Article I, Section 8, of the U.S. Constitution. It applies to most private non-agricultural workers and employers who work on one aspect of intergovernmental trade. The decisions and regulations of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), established by the NLRA, significantly complement and define the provisions of the Act. It is not possible to say whether workers have achieved equal bargaining with employers.
