Can CBA covered workers negotiate terms individually?

Terms and conditions of employment may be set by the letter of appointment as agreed between the employer and employee, or by a collective bargaining agreement (CBA) negotiated between an employer and a trade union.

Negotiation of collective bargaining agreements is provided for in the Labour Relations Act which provides that an employer, group of employers or an employers’ organisation that recognises a trade union shall conclude a collective agreement setting out terms and conditions of service for all unionisable employees covered by the recognition agreement.

The International Law Organisation (ILO) Convention 98 recognises the right of both workers and employers to collectively bargain for terms and conditions of service.

There is a write-up by Bill Bennet, an on-line commentator on employment issues, that makes some interesting reading about the usually knotty subject of salary negotiations.

He discusses how workers in Australia, New Zealand, and the US used to negotiate salaries “in the good old days”.

Mr Bennett has a rather humorous style of putting across his message.

If the things he wrote in a 2008 article truly represent what used to happen, then salary negotiations were even more intense then than they tend to be these days.

“Pay bargaining was even tougher in America, where negotiation could involve guns,” he wrote.

That’s how serious, or is it nasty, things were then.

Hopefully, no trade unionist shot an employer because then there would be no deal.

In Australia and New Zealand, union members and employers would lock themselves “in smoke-filled” rooms to agree on a standard pay rise for employees, but hardly were the discussions ever smooth.

From Mr Bennett’s article, which can be accessed on http://billbennett.co.nz/how-to-negotiate-a-pay-rise-in-uncertain-times, it sounds like “strikes, lock-outs, mass-sackings”, were more frequent then.

Firm stands were taken by both sides, and once a deal had been struck, it was conclusive and irreversible.

“Generally, pay negotiations would settle down with an agreement where every worker would get a similar pay rise,” writes Mr Bennett.

The connection this has with the present is that even now, salary negotiations are not an easy task.