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32: Good faith in bargaining for collective agreement
or “Rules for unions and employers to work together nicely when making agreements about jobs”
You could also call this:

“ Unions and employers must try their best to agree on rules for workers, unless they have a really good reason not to. ”

When you and your employer are talking about making a group agreement for workers, you both need to try your best to make it happen. This is called acting in ‘good faith’. You should end up with an agreement unless there’s a real, good reason not to.

There are some things that don’t count as good reasons to not make an agreement. These include:

  • Not liking the idea of group agreements in general
  • Not wanting to talk about how much people get paid
  • Not agreeing about including a fee for bargaining in the agreement
  • Having an unsettled argument about equal pay
  • Needing to look at a settled equal pay agreement again

If the agreement would involve more than one employer, it’s okay to not want that kind of agreement, as long as you have good reasons.

There’s a special rule in another part of the law that can change this last point in some cases.

When we talk about agreements with more than one employer, we mean one agreement that applies to two or more employers at the same time.

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Next up: 34: Providing information in bargaining for collective agreement

or “Rules for asking for and sharing information when workers and bosses talk about job agreements”
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Part 5 Collective bargaining
Good faith

33Duty of good faith requires parties to conclude collective agreement unless genuine reason not to

  1. The duty of good faith in section 4 requires a union and an employer bargaining for a collective agreement to conclude a collective agreement unless there is a genuine reason, based on reasonable grounds, not to.

  2. For the purposes of subsection (1), genuine reason does not include—

  3. opposition or objection in principle to—
    1. bargaining for, or being a party to, a collective agreement; or
      1. including rates of wages or salary in a collective agreement; or
      2. disagreement about including a bargaining fee clause under Part 6B in a collective agreement; or
        1. the existence of an unsettled pay equity claim between an employer and a claimant under the Equal Pay Act 1972; or
          1. the existence of a requirement to review a pay equity claim settlement under the Equal Pay Act 1972.

              1. For the purposes of subsection (1), opposition to concluding a multi-employer collective agreement is a genuine reason not to conclude a collective agreement if that opposition is based on reasonable grounds.

              2. Clause 6 of Schedule 1B overrides subsection (3).

              3. In this section and in clause 6 of Schedule 1B, multi-employer collective agreement means a single collective agreement involving 2 or more employers.

              Notes
              • Section 33: replaced, on , by section 14 of the Employment Relations Amendment Act 2018 (2018 No 53).
              • Section 33(2)(c): inserted, on , by section 33 of the Equal Pay Amendment Act 2020 (2020 No 45).
              • Section 33(2)(d): inserted, on , by section 33 of the Equal Pay Amendment Act 2020 (2020 No 45).
              • Section 33(2)(e): repealed, on , by section 7(1) of the Fair Pay Agreements Act Repeal Act 2023 (2023 No 65).