COLLECTIVE BARGAINING: CONCEPT AND IMPACT IN INDIA Collective bargaining has been defined by different experts in different ways. Nevertheless, it is treated as a method by which problem of wages and conditions of employment are resolved peacefully and voluntarily between labour and management. However, the term collective bargaining is opposed to individual bargaining1. Sometimes, it is described as a process of accommodation between two conflicting interests Here, power stands against power. The I.L.O. defines collective bargaining: ”As negotiations about working conditions and terms of employment between an employer, or a group of employers, or one or more employers’ organisations, on the one hand, and one or more representative workers’ organisation on the other with a view to reaching agreement.” This definition confines the term collective bargaining as a means of improving conditions of employment. But in fact, collective bargaining serves something more asset acceptance . Perlman aptly stated,”Collective bargaining is not just a means of raising wages and improving conditions of employment. Nor is it merely democratic government in industry. It is above all technique, collective bargaining as a technique of the rise of a new class is quite different …… from the desire to displace or abolish” the “old ruling class”… … to gain equal rights as a class … … to acquire an excessive jurisdiction in that sphere where the most immediate interests, both material and spiritual, are determined, and a shared jurisdiction with the older class or classes in all other spheres.2? COLLECTIVE BARGANING in India has been the subject matter of industrial adjudication since long and has been defined by our Law Courts. In Karol Leather Karamchari Sangathan v. Liberty Footwear Company3 the Supreme Court observed that,?Collective bargaining is a technique by which dispute as to conditions of employment is resolved amicably by agreement rather than coercion.