Collective Bargaining Agreement
A collective agreement is a labor contract between an employer and one or more unions.
Collective bargaining consists of the process of negotiation between representatives of a union and employers (represented by management, in some countries by employers' organization) in respect of the terms and conditions of employment of employees, such as wages, hours of work, working conditions and 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).
Many notable collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) in the United States involve major professional sports leagues. Because of a history of poor relations between the players' unions and owners of all the various major leagues, as well as because of the tremendous amounts of money involved, it has become difficult in recent years to work out agreements. A total breakdown in talks between the sides wiped out the entire 2004 2005 NHL hockey season, making the NHL the first major American sports league to lose an entire season to labor issues (the relevant parties reached an agreement in time to play the 2005-06 season).
The National Football League (NFL) had fears that disagreements over revenue allocation might force teams in 2006 to cut numerous star players in order to stay under the agreed-upon salary cap. Beyond this year, without an agreement for 2007, the salary cap provisions would have sunset. This could have caused players and owners both to seek substantially disparate compensation guidelines in their next CBA (e.g., sizes of pay increases year-to-year, the effect of signing bonuses on a team's cap, etc), raising the spectre of a strike in 2008. However, on March 8, 2006 the owners agreed in a 30-2 vote (the Buffalo Bills and Cincinnati Bengals voting against it) to accept the National Football League Players' Association's proposal, and also settled the revenue-sharing controversy, forestalling the above scenario.
The National Basketball Association's CBA also expired in summer 2005, and though the two sides ultimately reached an agreement, its last expiration caused the cancellation of one-half of the 1998-99 NBA season due to lockout. The NBA league has historically had poor labor relations, resulting in numerous lockouts of players and the shortening of a season.
