International collective agreement

"A written agreement regarding working conditions and terms of employment concluded between one or more employers or employers' organizations, on the one hand, and one or more representative workers' organizations or duly elected representatives of the workers, on the other."
(International Labour Organization (ILO), Collective agreement , Thesaurus, 2005, visited 17-01-2010)

There are very few international collective agreements covering working conditions. One exception concerns the agreement on flags of convenience that was signed in January 2001 with the International Maritime Employers' Committee and the International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF). It covers basic pay and conditions on 1,200 ships.

As an instance of international collective agreements, the international framework agreements (IFAs), signed by multinational corporations and international union federations, generally cover recognition and implementation of core labour standards.