Collective bargaining in the context of "Labor and employment law"

The International Labour Organization (ILO) is a United Nations agency whose mandate is to advance social and economic justice by setting international labour standards. Founded in October 1919 under the League of Nations, it is one of the first and oldest specialized agencies of the UN. The ILO has 187 member states: 186 out of 193 UN member states plus the Cook Islands. It is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, with around 40 field offices around the world, and employs some 3,381 staff across 107 nations, of whom 1,698 work in technical cooperation programmes and projects.

The ILO's standards are aimed at ensuring accessible, productive, and sustainable work worldwide in conditions of freedom, equity, security and dignity. They are set forth in 189 conventions and treaties, of which eight are classified as fundamental according to the 1998 Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work; together they protect freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining, the elimination of forced or compulsory labour, the abolition of child labour, and the elimination of discrimination in respect of employment and occupation. The ILO is a major contributor to international labour law.

Negotiation is a dialogue between two or more parties to resolve points of difference, gain an advantage for an individual or collective, or craft outcomes to satisfy various interests. The parties aspire to agree on matters of mutual interest. The agreement can be beneficial for all or some of the parties involved. The negotiators should establish their own needs and wants while also seeking to understand the wants and needs of others involved to increase their chances of closing deals, avoiding conflicts, forming relationships with other parties, or maximizing mutual gains. Distributive negotiations, or compromises, are conducted by putting forward a position and making concessions to achieve an agreement. The degree to which the negotiating parties trust each other to implement the negotiated solution is a major factor in determining the success of a negotiation.

People negotiate daily, often without considering it a negotiation. Negotiations may occur in organizations, including businesses, non-profits, and governments, as well as in sales and legal proceedings, and personal situations such as marriage, divorce, parenting, friendship, etc. Professional negotiators are often specialized. Examples of professional negotiators include union negotiators, leverage buyout negotiators, peace negotiators, and hostage negotiators. They may also work under other titles, such as diplomats, legislators, or arbitrators. Negotiations may also be conducted by algorithms or machines in what is known as automated negotiation. In automated negotiation, the participants and process have to be modeled correctly. Recent negotiation embraces complexity.

The labour movement is the collective organisation of working people to further their shared political and economic interests. It consists of the trade union or labour union movement, as well as political parties of labour. It can be considered an instance of class conflict.

• In trade unions, workers campaign for higher wages, better working conditions and fair treatment from their employers, and through the implementation of labour laws, from their governments. They do this through collective bargaining, sectoral bargaining, and when needed, strike action. In some countries, co-determination gives representatives of workers seats on the board of directors of their employers.

• Political parties representing the interests of workers campaign for labour rights, social security and the welfare state. They are usually called a labour party (in English-speaking countries), a social democratic party (in Germanic and Slavic countries), a socialist party (in Romance countries), or sometimes a workers' party.
• Though historically less prominent, the cooperative movement campaigns to replace capitalist ownership of the economy with worker cooperatives, consumer cooperatives, and other types of cooperative ownership. This is related to the concept of economic democracy.

The labour movement developed as a response to capitalism and the Industrial Revolution of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, at about the same time as socialism. The early goals of the movement were the right to unionise, the right to vote, democracy, safe working conditions and the 40-hour week. As these were achieved in many of the advanced economies of Western Europe and North America in the early decades of the 20th century, the labour movement expanded to issues of welfare and social insurance, wealth distribution and income distribution, public services like health care and education, social housing and in some cases common ownership.

Economic freedom, or economic liberty, is the agency of people to make economic decisions. This is a term used in economic and policy debates as well as in the philosophy of economics. One approach to economic freedom comes from the liberal tradition emphasizing free markets, free trade, and private property. Another approach to economic freedom extends the welfare economics study of individual choice, with greater economic freedom coming from a larger set of possible choices. Other conceptions of economic freedom include freedom from want and the freedom to engage in collective bargaining.

The liberal free-market viewpoint defines economic liberty as the freedom to produce, trade and consume any goods and services acquired without the use of force, fraud, theft or government regulation. This is embodied in the rule of law, property rights and freedom of contract, and characterized by external and internal openness of the markets, the protection of property rights and freedom of economic initiative. There are several indices of economic freedom that attempt to measure free market economic freedom. Based on these rankings, correlative studies have found higher economic growth to be correlated with higher scores on the country rankings. Critics of this approach, such as Fredrik Carlsson and Susanna Lundström, have argued that the economic freedom indices conflate unrelated policies and policy outcomes in order to conceal negative correlations between economic growth and free-market policies, such as counting lower corruption as an indicator of economic freedom.

Corporatism is an ideology and political system of interest representation and policymaking whereby corporate groups, such as agricultural, labour, military, business, scientific, or guild associations, come together and negotiate contracts or policy (collective bargaining) on the basis of their common interests. The term is derived from the Latin corpus, or "body".

Corporatism does not refer to a political system dominated by large business interests, even though the latter are commonly referred to as "corporations" in modern American vernacular and legal parlance. Instead, the correct term for that theoretical system would be corporatocracy. The terms "corporatocracy" and "corporatism" are often confused due to their similar names and to the use of corporations as organs of the state.

The Nordic model comprises the economic and social policies as well as typical cultural practices common in the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden). This includes a comprehensive welfare state and multi-level collective bargaining based on the economic foundations of social corporatism, and a commitment to private ownership within a market-based mixed economy – with Norway being a partial exception due to a large number of state-owned enterprises and state ownership in publicly listed firms.

Although there are significant differences among the Nordic countries, they all have some common traits. The three Scandinavian countries are constitutional monarchies, while Finland and Iceland have been republics since the 20th century. All the Nordic countries are however described as being highly democratic and all have a unicameral legislature and use proportional representation in their electoral systems. They all support a free market and universalist welfare state aimed specifically at enhancing individual autonomy and promoting social mobility, with a sizable percentage of the population employed by the public sector (roughly 30% of the work force in areas such as healthcare, education, and government), and a corporatist system with a high percentage of the workforce unionized and involving a tripartite arrangement, where representatives of labour and employers negotiate wages and labour market policy is mediated by the government. As of 2020, all of the Nordic countries rank highly on the inequality-adjusted HDI and the Global Peace Index as well as being ranked in the top 10 on the World Happiness Report.

Labor unions represent United States workers in many industries recognized under US labor law since the 1935 enactment of the National Labor Relations Act. Their activity centers on collective bargaining over wages, benefits, and working conditions for their membership, and on representing their members in disputes with management over violations of contract provisions. Larger labor unions also typically engage in lobbying activities and electioneering at the state and federal level.

Most unions in the United States are aligned with one of two larger umbrella organizations: the AFL-CIO created in 1955, and the Change to Win Federation (Strategic Organizing Center or SOC) which split from the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL–CIO) in 2005. Both advocate policies and legislation on behalf of workers in the United States and Canada, and take an active role in politics. The AFL–CIO is especially concerned with global trade issues.

The Police Federation of England and Wales (PFEW) is the statutory staff association for police constables, sergeants, inspectors, chief inspectors and special constables in the 43 territorial police forces in England and Wales. Under UK labour law, the police are prohibited from joining ordinary trade unions to defend pay and working conditions, by the Police Act 1996, because of the view that a police strike would pose an exceptional public safety risk. The PFEW was originally established by the Police Act 1919 as an alternative system, which would serve to represent staff, and where disputes could be resolved through arbitration so long as the government (as employer) continued to bargain in good faith. The Federation is not a trade union, but operates similarly to one in practice, bargaining collectively with police forces and the Home Office.

PFEW represents more than 130,000 members. Members can elect not to pay subscriptions and thereby not receive the legal representation and other benefits that paying members receive, but they still continue officially to be members of the Federation. Superintendents and chief superintendents are represented by a separate staff association, the Police Superintendents' Association of England and Wales (PSA), while the most senior officers are members of the Chief Police Officers Staff Association (CPOSA).