[znpy]

Are you from the US, by chance?

Collective agreements / collective bargaining are very common in europe, and their purpose is to establish a baseline of guarantees, compensation and generally workers rights.

Collective agreements are also incredibly common (in my eu country they cover like 98% of the workers).

The main reason for a company to avoid those is because of the intention to offer lower rights, worse pay, and less guarantees (job security / protection from discrimination etc).

These articles from Sweden give those concepts for granted because they usually are taken for granted in most Europe.

[robertlagrant]

This isn't about rights; rights are in law or constitutions. This is just about mutual contractual obligations.