Abstract:As an autonomy and market mechanism, the collective bargaining agreement (CBA) belongs to the contract system in the field of traditional private law. From the perspective of dogmatics of law, the formation and discharge of CBA is in the form of a contract under the private law, making obligational effects on the union and employer or the association of employers. All above is the phenomenon of private law. The classic private law once tried to explain the effects of CBA on the employee and employer through the Agency Theory and the third-party beneficiary theory, but could not hold water. While admitting the normative effects of CBA on the employee and employer, civil law countries, therefore, interpret the referred normative effect from perspectives of the social law, public law and private law by bringing up the Verbandstheorie, Delegationstheorie, and Autonomietheorie. In the eyes of history, social-economic base and system design of China's CBA system, and the interpretation scheme of private law are still the optimal, i.e. the CBA is established in the form of a contract and has binding effects on all employees through the resolution behavior of workers' congress, namely the normative effect. The collective bargaining agreement, thus, is a system under the private law.
