Key facts
A collective employment agreement (CEA) is a contract between employers or employers’ associations and employees’ associations (social partners for short). They are concluded to regulate working conditions and the relationship between the parties. A CEA can be declared to be generally binding if certain legal requirements are met and is then valid for all, i.e. also for those who are not members of a contracting association in a sector (outsiders). At the time of the audit, there were 46 CEAs that had been declared generally binding, covering an estimated 1 million workers and almost 70,000 employers.