The Private Sector Bargaining Process and Registered Collective Agreements

Abstract

Over the last 2 decades, New Zealand's private sector industrial relations system has fragmented into a system in which bargaining takes place at a number of levels with markedly differing procedures and criteria which lead to several different kinds of agreements. It is important that a satisfactory classification scheme be established for the variety of agreements now negotiated, since each category signifies something very different about the nature of the bargaining between unions and employers. If we leave to one side the vitally important area of unregistered agreements (which pose a different set of research problems), there is a general consensus that the classification system used for registered agreements is unsatisfactory.