Plain language law

New Zealand law explained for everyone

 Plain Language Law homepage
Back to
56A: Application of collective agreement to subsequent parties
or “This law explains how new employers and unions can join an existing work agreement if certain rules are followed.”
You could also call this:

“Workers can only follow one group agreement for their job, even if they belong to multiple unions.”

If you belong to more than one union, you can only be bound by one collective agreement for the work you do. This agreement will be the one that came from the first bargaining process that covered your work. This means that even if you’re in multiple unions, only one agreement will apply to your job.

This text is automatically generated. It might be out of date or be missing some parts. Find out more about how we do this.

Next up: 58: Employee who resigns as member of union but does not resign as employee

or “A worker who leaves their union but keeps their job can't join a new agreement for a while.”
Next

Part 5 Collective bargaining
Collective agreements

57Employee bound by only 1 collective agreement in respect of same work

  1. If an employee is a member of more than 1 union, the employee is bound by only 1 collective agreement covering the same work done by the employee, being the collective agreement resulting from the bargaining first initiated which covered the employee's work.