The analysis of a collective employment agreement in Georgia is built around three legal axes: the rules of form and term established by Article 57 of the Labour Code; the substantive floor created by Article 1; and the price of a violation defined by Article 80. Foreign grievance-and-arbitration models do not operate in the Georgian system — the criteria for analysing a collective agreement are written entirely by the Georgian Labour Code.
The form and term audit
Article 57 of the Code determines the essential conditions of a collective agreement. The agreement is concluded only in written form — an oral arrangement cannot serve as the source of this institution. It is concluded for a fixed or an indefinite term: a fixed-term agreement must provide for the date of its entry into force and the date of its expiry, while an indefinite-term agreement must contain provisions on its revision, amendment and termination. The first test of an analysis is precisely this list: whether a written document exists, whether the dates are fixed, and whether an indefinite agreement contains the necessary clauses.
The same article determines the circle of subjects: the agreement must define its subjects precisely, and its obligations extend to the parties. A special rule resolves membership: where the agreement is concluded between the employer and one or more associations and the association includes more than 50 percent of the employees working at the relevant enterprise, another employee of the same enterprise has the right to become a party to the agreement by written demand, and the employer is obliged to satisfy that demand within 30 calendar days of its receipt. The provisions of the agreement are an integral part of the individual employment contracts of the employees covered by it — which in an analysis means that the collective conditions must be verified at the individual level as well.