Understanding Unionization And Collective Bargaining

Unionization
Unionization is the process of gathering enough employees to form a labor union to represent
them in front of certain company, government or trade associations. It is a common practice for
workers to demand more benefits to companies by grouping themselves in large associations
with enough leverage to influence decisions. Unions started to appear in the 18th century as a
result of the development of many industries throughout Europe. They have experienced many
attempts to be disappeared or silenced by governments and business owners since unions have
a lot of leverage into the population as a whole and they have the potential to create social
unrest. This is the reason why in modern times most of the countries allow unions to be freely
formed but they also have to comply with many regulations to reduce their influence and
power to make them more manageable society participants.

Unionization on the other hand, is a tendency created as a result of unequal wealth distribution
normally promoted by capitalists systems. In this economic environments, workers tend to fill
under-compensated since they do the “hard work” and get only a small portion of the
company’s profits. In order to balance this situation, workers push trough unions to increase
their benefits, grasping a bigger portion of the profits along the way.

Collective Bargaining:
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. The
collective agreements reached by these negotiations usually set out wage scales, working
hours, training, health and safety, overtime, grievance mechanisms, and rights to participate in
workplace or company affairs.[1]

The union may negotiate with a single employer (who is typically representing a company's
shareholders) or may negotiate with a group of businesses, depending on the country, to reach
an industry-wide agreement. A collective agreement functions as a labour contract between an
employer and one or more unions. Collective bargaining consists of the process of negotiation
between representatives of a union and employers (generally represented by management, or,
in some countries such as Austria, Sweden and the Netherlands, by an employers' organization)
in respect of the terms and conditions of employment of employees, such as wages, hours of
work, working conditions, grievance procedures, and about the rights and responsibilities of
trade unions. The parties often refer to the result of the negotiation as a collective bargaining
agreement (CBA)