Workplace negotiations are one of the more obvious forms of constituency negotiations. They have all the ingredients of complexity and it is not surprising that sometimes the negotiations go very wrong, resulting in a poor outcome for all concerned. However although strikes and lockouts make the headlines, by far the greater majority of management–union negotiations result in agreements the parties can comfortably live with.

As with other constituency negotiations there will be a range of priorities within each side – that is, the management and the employees, some of whom may not be union members. In workplace negotiations, there is a lack of symmetry between the parties not evident in negotiations between two businesses. Even if one business is a conglomerate and the other small, they are still both businesses whereas a company and an employee group (whether in a union or not) are completely different entities with different negotiation resources and options. The fact that workers are the employees of the company they are negotiating with – or perhaps, against – adds to the asymmetry (Fells, 1998b). With the demise of compulsory arbitration, the union has to reach agreement with the employer but the company has options that do not involve reaching agreement with the union. Further, when management and union (or indeed any group of workers) commit to reach some form of enterprise agreement they are negotiating more than the terms of the document.