A union contract or collective bargaining agreement (CBA) is a written legal contract between an employer and a union representing the employees. The ability to negotiate a CBA is one of the most important rights workers gain when they win their union. The final agreement is the result of an extensive collective negotiation process between the employer and workers in their union.

With a union contract workers are able to make improvements in wages, working conditions, benefits, and much much more. And by collectively negotiating your union contract, that means management cannot make abrupt changes such as cutting wages and benefits, firing employees, playing favorites, or changing schedules and holidays without workers having a say.

Bargaining a strong union contract is a process that is unique for each employer and each bargaining committee. But usually the process goes like this:

Step 1: The entire bargaining unit is surveyed to fin out what changes they would like to see and information requests are made to management to find out information relevant to bargaining.

Step 2: The bargaining committee and OPEIU staff work together to draft contract language proposals to address these issues.

Step 3: The bargaining committee and OPEIU present those proposal to management across the table and negotiate until a tentative agreement is reached.

Step 4: The final contract is ratified by a vote of the entire membership of the bargaining unit.

This entire process also includes communication between the bargaining committee and the whole bargaining unit and collective actions by the entire unit to win the best possible contract.

Typically in each contract negotiation session there is the bargaining committee and an OPEIU staff representative. On management’s side, typically there is a representative of management, an attorney, and whoever else from management they think may have expertise on a specific topic of bargaining for that session.

After serious negotiation between the employer on one side and the workers and their union on the other going over point by point all the proposals in the contract, when both sides reach a tentative agreement (TA) about what the final agreement should be, the negotiated contract will be put up for a ratification vote by the members of the union. If the tentative agreement is ratified, then the contract will come into force. If the contract is voted down, then both sides will come to the table again until an agreement can be reached.