A differentiation can essentially be made between legal obligatory content and statutory content.
Legal obligatory content
The legal obligatory content includes statutory requirements and contractual stipulations, whose effects develop between the contractual parties. Part of the rights and duties are based upon legislation (comp. Art. 357 of the ‘CoO’). Others can be based upon the terms and conditions of the ‘CLA’ itself (comp. Art. 356, Para. 3 of the ‘CoO’). The more important duties are:
Duty of compliance
The contractual parties are under a duty to ensure compliance with a ‘CLA’ (comp. Art. 357a, Para. 1 of the ‘CoO’).
Duty of execution
The duty of execution is a duty to implement the agreement as well as to fulfil the collectively contracted assignments.
Duty of communication
Under Art. 357a of the ‘CoO’, the employers associations and the trade unions are to communicate with their members and exercise benign influence for compliance with the ‘CLA’, and if necessary to apply the remedies under their by-laws and the under the statute law to enforce such.
Duty of keeping the industrial peace
Under Art. 357a, Para. 2 of the ‘CoO’, each of the contractual parties is bound to keep industrial peace and to desist from any industrial action concerning matters which are regulated under a ‘CLA’.
Statutory content
Statutory stipulations are the regulations concerning the conclusion, content and notice of termination of individual contracts of employment, which are directly applicable for the employers and the employees, and which cannot be excluded by the introduction of other terms and conditions (comp. Art. 357, Para. 1 of the ‘CoO’). The stipulations are agreed between an employers association (or an individual employer) and a trade union. The effects however impinge at the level of the individual employer and the individual employee.
The regulations can be enforced on the individual level, as if these were agreed directly between the individual contractual parties.
