Legal Definitions - sixty-day notice

The sixty-day notice is a specific requirement under U.S. labor law, particularly the Taft-Hartley Act. It mandates that either an employer or a labor union must provide 60 days' advance written notice before they can modify or terminate an existing collective bargaining agreement. This period is designed to facilitate negotiations and prevent sudden disruptions to labor relations. During these 60 days, both strikes by the union and lockouts by the employer are legally prohibited, ensuring a stable environment for discussions.

Here are some examples illustrating the application of the sixty-day notice:

• Union Seeking Wage Revisions: Imagine a union representing airline mechanics believes that their current wage rates have fallen behind industry standards. To initiate negotiations for higher wages and improved benefits, the union must first issue a sixty-day notice to the airline management. This notice formally signals their intent to reopen the collective bargaining agreement to discuss new financial terms. During these 60 days, the union cannot call a strike, and the airline cannot lock out its workers, allowing both sides time to prepare for and engage in good-faith negotiations without immediate industrial action.

• Employer Proposing Operational Changes: Consider a large manufacturing company whose collective bargaining agreement with its employees' union is nearing its expiration. The company's management wants to implement new automated processes that would require retraining some employees and potentially reassigning others, thus necessitating changes to work rules outlined in the current agreement. Before they can formally propose these changes and begin negotiations, the manufacturing company's management must provide the union with a sixty-day notice. This ensures the union has ample time to review the proposed operational shifts, consult with its members, and prepare its own negotiating strategy, all while maintaining production stability without strikes or lockouts.

• Decision to Terminate an Agreement: Suppose a specific division of a healthcare system is being spun off into an independent entity, and the existing collective bargaining agreement with its nurses' union is no longer suitable for the new structure. If either the current healthcare system or the union decides to terminate the entire agreement rather than just modify it, they must still issue a sixty-day notice to the other party. This notice provides a crucial window for the parties to discuss the implications of termination, potentially negotiate a new agreement with the spun-off entity, or manage the transition for the affected nurses, all while ensuring patient care continues without interruption from strikes or lockouts during this period.