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A trade union or labor union, often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers whose purpose is to maintain or improve the conditions of their employment, such as attaining better wages and benefits, improving working conditions, improving safety standards, establishing complaint procedures, developing rules governing status of employees and protecting and increasing the bargaining power of workers.
Labour laws, labour code or employment laws are those that mediate the relationship between workers, employing entities, trade unions, and the government. Collective labour law relates to the tripartite relationship between employee, employer, and union.
Collective bargaining is a process of negotiation between employers and a group of employees aimed at agreements to regulate working salaries, working conditions, benefits, and other aspects of workers' compensation and rights for workers. The interests of the employees are commonly presented by representatives of a trade union to which the employees belong. A collective agreement reached by these negotiations functions as a labour contract between an employer and one or more unions, and typically establishes terms regarding wage scales, working hours, training, health and safety, overtime, grievance mechanisms, and rights to participate in workplace or company affairs. Such agreements can also include 'productivity bargaining' in which workers agree to changes to working practices in return for higher pay or greater job security.
United Kingdom labour law regulates the relations between workers, employers and trade unions. People at work in the UK have a minimum set of employment rights, from Acts of Parliament, Regulations, common law and equity. This includes the right to a minimum wage of £11.44 for over-23-year-olds from April 2023 under the National Minimum Wage Act 1998. The Working Time Regulations 1998 give the right to 28 days paid holidays, breaks from work, and attempt to limit long working hours. The Employment Rights Act 1996 gives the right to leave for child care, and the right to request flexible working patterns. The Pensions Act 2008 gives the right to be automatically enrolled in a basic occupational pension, whose funds must be protected according to the Pensions Act 1995. Workers must be able to vote for trustees of their occupational pensions under the Pensions Act 2004. In some enterprises, such as universities or NHS foundation trusts, staff can vote for the directors of the organisation. In enterprises with over 50 staff, workers must be negotiated with, with a view to agreement on any contract or workplace organisation changes, major economic developments or difficulties. The UK Corporate Governance Code recommends worker involvement in voting for a listed company's board of directors but does not yet follow international standards in protecting the right to vote in law. Collective bargaining, between democratically organised trade unions and the enterprise's management, has been seen as a "single channel" for individual workers to counteract the employer's abuse of power when it dismisses staff or fix the terms of work. Collective agreements are ultimately backed up by a trade union's right to strike: a fundamental requirement of democratic society in international law. Under the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 strike action is protected when it is "in contemplation or furtherance of a trade dispute".
Australian labour law sets the rights of working people, the role of trade unions, and democracy at work, and the duties of employers, across the Commonwealth and in states. Under the Fair Work Act 2009, the Fair Work Commission creates a national minimum wage and oversees National Employment Standards for fair hours, holidays, parental leave and job security. The FWC also creates modern awards that apply to most sectors of work, numbering 150 in 2024, with minimum pay scales, and better rights for overtime, holidays, paid leave, and superannuation for a pension in retirement. Beyond this floor of rights, trade unions and employers often create enterprise bargaining agreements for better wages and conditions in their workplaces. In 2024, collective agreements covered 15% of employees, while 22% of employees were classified as "casual", meaning that they lose many protections other workers have. Australia's laws on the right to take collective action are among the most restrictive in the developed world, and Australia does not have a general law protecting workers' rights to vote and elect worker directors on corporation boards as do most other wealthy OECD countries.
Finnish national income policy agreements or comprehensive income policy agreements are tripartite agreements between Finnish trade unions, employers' organizations, and the Finnish government. They are policy documents covering a wide range of economic and political issues, such as salaries, taxation, pensions, unemployment benefits, and housing costs. They represent collective bargaining taken to its logical maximum, reaching virtually all wage-earners. Their enforcement is made easier by the universal validity of collective labour agreements. However, they are voluntary agreements and are not considered government legislation, i.e. they do not represent central planning of the economy.
United States labor law sets the rights and duties for employees, labor unions, and employers in the US. Labor law's basic aim is to remedy the "inequality of bargaining power" between employees and employers, especially employers "organized in the corporate or other forms of ownership association". Over the 20th century, federal law created minimum social and economic rights, and encouraged state laws to go beyond the minimum to favor employees. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 requires a federal minimum wage, currently $7.25 but higher in 29 states and D.C., and discourages working weeks over 40 hours through time-and-a-half overtime pay. There are no federal laws, and few state laws, requiring paid holidays or paid family leave. The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 creates a limited right to 12 weeks of unpaid leave in larger employers. There is no automatic right to an occupational pension beyond federally guaranteed Social Security, but the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 requires standards of prudent management and good governance if employers agree to provide pensions, health plans or other benefits. The Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 requires employees have a safe system of work.
Labor rights or workers' rights are both legal rights and human rights relating to labor relations between workers and employers. These rights are codified in national and international labor and employment law. In general, these rights influence working conditions in the relations of employment. One of the most prominent is the right to freedom of association, otherwise known as the right to organize. Workers organized in trade unions exercise the right to collective bargaining to improve working conditions.
Enterprise bargaining is an Australian term for a form of collective bargaining, in which wages and working conditions are negotiated at the level of the individual organisations, as distinct from sectoral collective bargaining across whole industries. Once established, they are legally binding on employers and employees that are covered by the Enterprise bargaining agreement. An Enterprise Agreement (EA) consists of a collective industrial agreement between either an employer and a trade union acting on behalf of employees or an employer and employees acting for themselves.
The European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) is the major trade union organisation representing workers at the European level. In its role as a European social partner, the ETUC works both in a consulting role with the European Commission and negotiates agreements and work programmes with European employers. It coordinates the national and sectoral policies of its affiliates on social and economic matters, particularly in the framework of the EU institutional processes, including European economic governance and the EU Semester.
Social dialogue is the process whereby social partners negotiate, often in collaboration with the government, to influence the arrangement and development of work-related issues, labour market policies, social protection, taxation or other economic policies. It is a widespread procedure to develop public policies in Western Europe in particular.
The Independent Christian Trade Unions of Slovakia (NKOS) is a trade union center in Slovakia. It has a membership of 10,000 in three affiliated unions. Independent Christian Unions of Slovakia (NKOS) are an Open Union Confederation, based on Christian principles of democracy and humanism, registered at the Ministry of Interior of the Slovak republic on 26 May 1993 by law no. 83/1990 Zb. about Association of Citizens, as amended. History of NKOS In the years 1920 -1940 Christian unions were a significant factor in the state. They were called the Slovak Christian-social trade association. Their activity was forcibly closed in 1948. After the Velvet Revolution in 1989, an effort to restore their activity emerged. In 1990 the first Christian workers' clubs were created. Then came Christian Unions of Slovakia. Christian trade unionists efforts culminated on 26 March 1993 when NKOS were registered at the Ministry of Interior, their chairman was prof. Milan Katuninec. In 1994 the first NKOS trade union, railways, was created, with the chairman Joseph Micsinai and two years later the Trade Union of Workers in Education and Science of Slovakia came into existence with its first chairman Vladimir Cinderella. In 1995, a trade union KOVO METAL was founded, its first chairman was Dušan Mihalik. In December 1994, NKOS became a member of the International Labour Organisation. They became an observer of ITUC on the Compounding Congress in Vienna in 2006.
The Prices and Incomes Accord was a series of agreements between the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), in effect from 1983 to 1996. Central to these agreements was an incomes policy to address the stagflation crisis by restraining wages. The unions agreed to restrict their wage demands, and in exchange, the government provided a 'social wage' of welfare and tax cuts.
Labor relations or labor studies is a field of study that can have different meanings depending on the context in which it is used. In an international context, it is a subfield of labor history that studies the human relations with regard to work in its broadest sense and how this connects to questions of social inequality. It explicitly encompasses unregulated, historical, and non-Western forms of labor. Here, labor relations define "for or with whom one works and under what rules. These rules determine the type of work, type and amount of remuneration, working hours, degrees of physical and psychological strain, as well as the degree of freedom and autonomy associated with the work." More specifically in a North American and strictly modern context, labor relations is the study and practice of managing unionized employment situations. In academia, labor relations is frequently a sub-area within industrial relations, though scholars from many disciplines including economics, sociology, history, law, and political science also study labor unions and labor movements. In practice, labor relations is frequently a subarea within human resource management. Courses in labor relations typically cover labor history, labor law, union organizing, bargaining, contract administration, and important contemporary topics.
A collective agreement, collective labour agreement (CLA) or collective bargaining agreement (CBA) is a written contract negotiated through collective bargaining for employees by one or more trade unions with the management of a company that regulates the terms and conditions of employees at work. This includes regulating the wages, benefits, and duties of the employees and the duties and responsibilities of the employer or employers and often includes rules for a dispute resolution process.
Henry v London General Transport Services Ltd[2002] EWCA 488 is a UK labour law case concerning the scope of protection for people to employment rights.
Collective agreement coverage or union representation refers to the proportion of people in a country population whose terms and conditions at work are made by collective bargaining, between an employer and a trade union, rather than by individual contracts. This is invariably higher than the union membership rate, because collective agreements almost always protect non-members in a unionised workplace. This means that, rather than individuals who have weaker bargaining power representing themselves in negotiations, people organise to represent each other together when negotiating for better pay and conditions in their workplace. The number of people who are covered by collective agreements is higher than the number of union members, and in many cases substantially higher, because when trade unions make collective agreements they aim to cover everyone at work, even those who have not necessarily joined for membership.
The union density or union membership rate conveys the number of trade union members who are employees as a percentage of the total number of employees in a given industry or country. This is normally lower than collective agreement coverage rate, which refers to all people whose terms of work are collectively negotiated. Trade unions bargain with employers to improve pay, conditions, and decision-making in workplaces; higher rates of union density within an industry or country will generally indicate higher levels of trade union bargaining power, lower rates of density will indicate less bargaining power.
A Manifesto for Labour Law: towards a comprehensive revision of workers’ rights is a set of reform proposals for UK labour law, written by fifteen labour rights experts in academia and legal practice from the UK, Europe and the Commonwealth. It is edited by Keith D. Ewing, John Hendy QC and Carolyn Jones. The Manifesto urges that to stop low productivity, rising inequality, stagnant low wages, and poor working conditions, there should be a shift toward sectoral collective bargaining, worker voice in corporate governance, and a renewed Ministry of Labour with power to support democracy at work. In full, it lists 25 recommendations for reform.
The Adequate Wage Directive 2022 is a European Union Directive on the setting of minimum wages and collective bargaining in EU law.
References
- Collins, Hugh; Ewing, Keith; McColgan, Aileen (2019). "Freedom of Association and Trade Union Autonomy". Labour Law. pp. 522–570. doi:10.1017/9781108617758.014. ISBN 978-1-108-61775-8. S2CID 243023161.
- L Fulton, 'Worker representation in Europe' (2015) Labour Research Department and ETUI
- Collective bargaining coverage from worker-participation.eu