Master contract
A collective labor contract is an agreement for a certain geographical scope ( pay scale ) or a specific area (eg, North Rhine -Westphalia or the district of Baden -Württemberg). It is always valid for one or more sectors (metal, retail, etc. ); Therefore, one often speaks of sectoral collective agreements.
These agreements apply to all employers in this industry in the tariff area, are members of the collective closing employers' association (see: tariff binding). Companies that do not belong to the employers' association, are not obliged to apply the collective agreement. In recent times include collective agreements increasingly opening clauses that define the exceptional situations, which can be deviated from the collective agreement.
The German collective agreements are determined by the system of collective agreements. In addition to the union contracts, there are also company agreements (eg Lufthansa, VW, Post).
Collective labor contract in the discussion
On the part of the employer is often argued that a collective agreement could be suitable for all at the same time hardly, for example, a steel mill, a foundry and a computer chip manufacturers in the same tariff area where yet all are positioned differently in the market or possibly just make some profit while others are under certain circumstances even before the bankruptcy.
Unions engage in their argument occasionally back to business, and occasionally on economic arguments. Only under special circumstances, they also take one or other insolvency of individual particularly disadvantageous been imputed enterprises in purchase to obtain the actual total wages or regional purchasing power. Disappears a detrimental established company after insolvency proceedings from the market, go to job losses for union members. A sectoral agreement, however, could keep the overall level of wages in the region, so that the total purchasing power and thus the demand in the region was not declining.
A takeover of job logic is distinguished from the trade unions from the fact that companies and jobs to try to keep a variety of compromises. Therefore people are more likely to total company agreements. The associated erosion of the surface collective agreement is seen by the unions still critical. So is often doubted that the move away from the area economy as a whole actually leads to an improvement of the collective labor market situation. Rather, a Verbetrieblichung hemme the tariff policy to productivity growth and the development of product innovation, so that long-term negative employment effects are to be feared at the macroeconomic level. It is necessary for this argument also subsidized by the legislature stabilization of the tariff system and the introduction of a uniform minimum wage.