COMPANY AGREEMENT

Term designating a collective agreement covering a single establishment or enterprise (the term Firmenkollektivvertrag is used synonymously). In Austria, the company agreement in the narrow sense of a single-employer agreement (a collective agreement between an individual enterprise and the union) exists only in a very few exceptional cases, since as a general principle individual employers do not possess the capacity to conclude collective agreements. Company-specific agreements do, however, exist in the form of agreements concluded at associational level (i.e. between the employers' and employees' organizations authorized to conclude collective agreements) whose scope is restricted to a single establishment or enterprise. According to prevailing expert opinion, such an agreement is in principle valid.