Compilation of decisions of the Committee on Freedom of Association

Collective bargaining15

Relationship between individual employment contracts and collective agreements

1. When in the course of collective bargaining with the trade union, the enterprise offers better working conditions to non-unionized workers under individual agreements, there is a serious risk that this might undermine the negotiating capacity of the trade union and give rise to discriminatory situations in favour of the non-unionized staff; furthermore, it might encourage unionized workers to withdraw from the union.

1. The Committee requested a Government to ensure that a negotiation with individual workers was not detrimental to collective negotiation with the trade union organization.

1. The relationship between individual employment contracts and collective agreements, and in particular the possibility that the former may override certain clauses in the latter under specific conditions, is dealt with differently in the various countries and under the various types of collective bargaining systems concerned. The basic task of the Committee is to decide whether the facts of the case are compatible with the Conventions and principles concerning freedom of association. In a case in which the relationship between individual contracts and the collective agreement seems to have been agreed between the employers and the trade union organizations, the Committee considered that the case did not call for further examination.

1. In one case, the Committee found it difficult to reconcile the equal status given in the law to individual and collective contracts with the ILO principles on collective bargaining, according to which the full development and utilization of machinery for voluntary negotiation between employers or employers organizations and workers organizations should be encouraged and promoted, with a view to the regulation of terms and conditions of employment by means of collective agreements. In effect, it seemed that the Act allowed collective bargaining by means of collective agreements, along with other alternatives, rather than promoting and encouraging it.