We define collective agreement as the agreement or pact made between two or more people or organizations, on a certain matter. A collective agreement is therefore, a type of pact or agreement on the working conditions, rights and obligations, which regulate a certain professional sector.
The agreement is the result of collective bargaining between the representatives of the workers and the employer. That is, the representatives of the companies of the professional sector on which the rights and obligations are regulated. When a collective agreement is drawn up, the representatives of the workers and the company intervene in its preparation and subsequent approval,
Types of collective agreements
We can classify collective agreements based on their scope of application into two types.
Sectorial collective agreement
This type of agreement affects an entire sector of economic activity. There are five types of sectoral agreements.
- Local or regional sectoral agreement. They affect a specific economic activity in a locality or region.
- Provincial sectoral agreement. They affect a professional sector of a province.
- Interprovincial sectoral agreement. They affect a sector of several provinces. From the same community or different.
- Autonomous sectoral agreement. Those that affect an autonomous community.
- State or national sectoral agreement. These agreements affect the entire national territory.
Own collective agreement
Also known as the company collective agreement. They are those agreements that affect a single company or groups of companies, within a sector.
Order of priority of collective agreements
Sometimes the situation may arise where there is more than one applicable collective agreement for the same job. For these cases the order of application priority is as follows.
- First: company agreement.
- Second place: local or regional sectoral agreement.
- Third: Provincial sectoral agreement.
- Fourth place: Regional sectoral agreement.
- Finally: workers' statute or state agreements.