From a request letter to a registered agreement: collective bargaining in Iraq, step by step

A union committee at a factory in Baghdad wants to improve shift allowances and safety rules. Management wants predictable labour costs for the next few years. Both end up asking the Law Office of Ali Barakat in al-Yarmouk the same thing: how does a collective agreement actually come about, and what holds it in place? Labour Law No. 37 of 2015 answers in Chapter Fifteen. Below we follow the route in the order it happens, with the clock that runs at each stage.

Stage zero: the principles behind the route

The State’s labour policy respects the fundamental principles and rights at work, which include freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to bargain collectively (art. 6). Among the worker’s own rights are negotiating to improve working conditions, striking in accordance with the Law, and forming and joining unions (art. 42). The Law defines a workers’ organisation as a free body with its own legal personality and financial and administrative independence that represents and defends workers (art. 1).

Stage one: who sits at the table?

On the workers’ side: unions and federations, or, where there is no workers’ organisation, elected workers’ representatives. On the other side: a single employer, a group of employers, or one or more employers’ organisations (art. 146). The parties choose the level: one business, a sector or part of one, a region or governorate, or the whole country, and no outside party may impose the level on them. An agreement at the level of one business may not be less favourable than a higher-level agreement covering the same business, unless the higher agreement allows it (art. 147).

The purposes the Law gives bargaining are practical: the social development of workers, better working conditions, organised employment relations and relations between the two sides’ organisations, and the resolution of disputes between them (art. 147).

Stage two: when must the employer bargain?

• The one-fifth rule: an employer may not refuse to negotiate when it receives a written request from one or more unions representing more than twenty per cent of the business’s workers who would be covered (art. 148, first paragraph).
• Below one fifth: at either side’s request, the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs may organise a secret ballot involving at least sixty per cent of the workers not represented by those unions. If more than half of those voting support bargaining and authorise the unions to act for them, the employer must negotiate (art. 148, second paragraph).
• Several unions: some or all of them may agree on joint representation, and the employer may not then refuse.
• No union in the business: negotiation takes place with elected workers, with representatives of a trade union federation present, in the manner the article sets out.

Stage three: the clock

Both sides must supply the information needed for the talks to run properly, and each may ask its own organisation for data (art. 149, fourth paragraph).

If the talks fail: either side may ask the Employment and Loans Department in writing to take the steps the Law provides for resolving the dispute (art. 150, second paragraph). The route for disputes before court is on the page on labour disputes before court.

Preparing for the first session

On either side, the work that pays off is done before the talks start. Union representatives should be able to show which workers they represent, because the one-fifth and one-half thresholds in articles 148 and 151 turn on it. Management should gather the figures the other side is likely to ask for, since article 149 obliges both to share the information the talks need. And both should write the request or reply so that it lists the subjects precisely, because the talks are about those subjects.

Stage four: what goes into the agreement

The outcome is written up as a collective agreement (art. 150, first paragraph). It may set out the parties and their addresses, its scope, its start date and its duration, which may not be less than one year. It may deal with pay and how it is set; hours, paid holidays and overtime; probation; disciplinary rules and penalties; vocational training; working conditions and safety; review, amendment and ending of the agreement; the rights of unions and of workers’ representatives; relations between the parties; a mechanism for applying the agreement; and procedures for resolving disputes (art. 154). One limit cannot be bargained away: an agreement may not give workers fewer rights than the Labour Law or other statutes give them.

Stage five: who is bound?

The agreement binds its parties and everyone who signed for another (art. 151, first paragraph). It covers, by operation of law, all the business’s workers represented in the talks by one or more unions representing at least half of the workforce (art. 151, second paragraph). And if the employer gives non-union workers better conditions, those conditions extend automatically to union members (art. 151, third paragraph).

Stage six: registration and display

The parties deposit the agreement with the Employment and Loans Department, which registers it within thirty days at most and supplies a copy showing the registration date. Within the same thirty days it may tell the parties in writing of any conflict with the Law. The employer then posts the agreement in a visible place at the workplace (art. 155).

Stage seven: renewal and ending

Renewal talks must start three months before the agreement expires. If that period passes without agreement, the old agreement continues for three more months while talks go on, and if those run out too, either side may ask the Department to act (art. 150, third paragraph).

An agreement ends by the parties’ agreement; when a fixed term expires; by one party’s notice after three years in force, where it is open-ended or runs longer than three years, with ninety days’ notice; or, for a business-level agreement, when the business closes. It does not end because ownership of the business, or part of it, passes to someone new (art. 156).

A point that is often confused

Consulting workers’ representatives while drawing up internal work rules (art. 136) is not collective bargaining and does not produce a registered agreement. The difference is explained on the page on what the Law requires of workplace rules. The wider structure of the Law is on the page on Labour Law No. 37 of 2015.

Legal basis and sources

1. Labour Law No. 37 of 2015 (Iraqi Official Gazette, issue 4386 of 9/11/2015) — Articles 1, 6, 42 and 146–156

Frequently asked questions

Related topics and articles

• 01Labour Law No. 37 of 2015: its chapters and the questions they raiseAn educational reading of the chapters of Labour Law No. 37 of 2015: the contract, wages, termination and the courts, not an article-by-article text.
• 02What does the Labour Law require of workplace internal rules? A statutory readingWhat Labour Law 37/2015 requires of workplace internal rules: the content in article 136, and posting under article 107, not the filing steps.
• 03How is a labour dispute taken to the Department before the Court of Labor?Referring a labour dispute to the Department of Employment and Loans and then to the Court of Labor, reading articles 157 and 168 of Law 37/2015 together.
• 04End-of-service entitlements under Labour Law No. 37 of 2015The end-of-service gratuity under Labour Law 37/2015: the two-week formula, the statutory exceptions, and how it differs from benefits under Law 18/2023.
• 05Which labour and social-security rules apply in the governorates and in the Kurdistan Region?The reach of Labour Law 37/2015 and Law 18/2023 in the governorates not organised in a region, and how work is organised in the Kurdistan Region.

Always check the text in force and its amendments in the official source.

To ask about your matter