Negotiation of a Collective Bargaining Agreement Collective bargaining is the process in which an employer and an accredited employee representative negotiate an agreement concerning wages, hours, and other terms and conditions of employment. An employer and a union representing its employees have a mutual obligation under the NLRA to bargain with each other in good faith. The primary goal of collective bargaining is to promote industrial peace between employers and employees. The parties have a duty to try reasonably to accommodate differences and reach common ground, but ultimately they have no obligation to enter into a contract. The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service or state labor agencies may provide parties with mediators to help them negotiate.
Mediators act as neutral facilitators.
It is a fundamental part of federal labor policy that unions and management should resolve their disputes through voluntary collective bargaining and not through the imposition of a solution by the government. If a labor dispute becomes serious enough to significantly affect national health or safety, the president has the statutory authority to obtain an eighty-day injunction from the federal courts against any strike or lockout. This procedure has been used over three dozen times since 1947, but rarely since the 1970s. When an employer and a union are unable to resolve their differences and negotiate an employment contract, the parties may use different types of pressure to produce an agreement. These types of pressure include boycotts, strikes, the carrying of signs and banners, picketing, and lockouts.