The optimal legal and institutional framework for facilitating workers' access to collective bargaining is a central issue for labour law. Since 2009, Australian labour law has adopted a novel approach to the issue of whether workers should have the right-and employers, the obligation-to engage in collective bargaining. The Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) (FW Act) seeks to promote collective bargaining in good faith at the enterprise level, by empowering the Fair Work Commission (FWC) to facilitate good faith bargaining and the making of enterprise agreements. One of the key mechanisms available to the FWC is the power to make a majority support determination (MSD), in situations where an employer refuses to bargain and a majority of the relevant employees want to bargain collectively. The making of an MSD then triggers a number of other obligations (including the good faith bargaining requirements) and opens the way to other forms of FWC involvement in the bargaining process. An MSD has the effect of compelling an employer to bargain collectively where it has previously refused to do so. The MSD process is therefore akin to the statutory union recognition procedure operating in the UK and the longstanding union recognition processes that apply under Canadian and US labour laws. However, the Australian iteration of these legislative attempts to address the problem of employer resistance to bargaining is distinctive because it gives the FWC considerable flexibility in the method used to determine majority support for bargaining.

中文翻译：

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在澳大利亚和英国建立集体谈判权：澳大利亚公平工作法下的多数支持决定是否是一种更有效的工会承认形式？

促进工人参与集体谈判的最佳法律和制度框架是劳动法的核心问题。自 2009 年以来，澳大利亚劳动法采用了一种新颖的方法来解决工人是否应该有权——雇主有义务——参与集体谈判的问题。2009 年《公平工作法》（联邦）（FW 法）旨在通过授权公平工作委员会 (FWC) 促进善意谈判和企业协议的制定，促进企业层面的善意集体谈判。FWC 可用的关键机制之一是在雇主拒绝谈判且大多数相关员工希望集体谈判的情况下做出多数支持决定 (MSD) 的权力。然后，制定 MSD 会触发许多其他义务（包括善意谈判要求），并为其他形式的 FWC 参与谈判过程开辟了道路。MSD 具有迫使雇主在先前拒绝这样做的情况下进行集体谈判的效果。因此，MSD 流程类似于在英国运作的法定工会认可程序以及适用于加拿大和美国劳动法的长期工会认可流程。然而，澳大利亚为解决雇主拒绝讨价还价的问题而反复进行的这些立法尝试是与众不同的，因为它为 FWC 在用于确定多数支持讨价还价的方法上提供了相当大的灵活性。