agreement and its legal repercussions.Alongside the act, therefore, regulations in other acts appeared as general legal rules to the extent that they could be applied to the collective agreement. In that context, the investigation especially emphasised the rules of the 1915Act on Contracts.546 The need for peace on the labour market was placed at the forefront.The committee argued that the collective agreement had two main functions, namely, on the one hand to provide norms for the terms in the individual labour contracts, and on the other, to serve as an instrument of industrial peace between the parties of the collective agreements.The experts emphasised the latter purpose and, like Ekeberg and others, took a clear stand in favour of the so-called cumulative theory.According to the experts “there should probably be no doubt about” that the general opinion was that collective agreements should be binding for both the contracting organisations and their members. The norms of the collective agreement should be“automatically transferred” to the individual labour contract, which entailed that if employers and workers who were bound by a collective agreement entered into a conflicting agreement, then this contract should be without effect on their mutual relationship.547 The three experts further emphasised that as a result of the collective agreement’s “nature”, as a rule industrial action could not be permitted. Moreover, “it should probably in general be considered” that the parties to a collective agreement during the period of contract should not be allowed to resort to industrial action because of a dispute regarding the fulfilment of the agreement or its validity, condition or correct meaning.An immediate consequence of the “nature” of the collective agreement was a prohibition against resorting to industrial actions in order to bring about a change in an existing collective agreement. p a r t i v, c h a p t e r 9 270 546 Utkast (Draft) 1927, p. 17, section 1. 547 Utkast 1927, pp. 18-19, section 2-3.
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