Is the workforce covered by a collective labour agreement?

Collective bargaining agreement coverage is a percentage, not a yes-or-no

The answer is typically a coverage rate: what proportion of staff falls under a collective bargaining agreement, expressed as a percentage of total headcount or FTE. VSME requests this as quantitative data, not as a yes-or-no question. So not "yes, because a collective bargaining agreement applies", but for example "82% of staff falls under a collective bargaining agreement". If no collective bargaining agreement applies to any part of staff, the percentage is 0 — that is a valid and complete answer, not missing data.

The supporting document for this is usually an export from the personnel system, linked to the collective bargaining agreement classification per job category or location. For enterprises with multiple collective bargaining agreements — for example a separate agreement for production staff and no agreement for office staff — it is customary to specify the percentage per collective bargaining agreement or in any case to substantiate the total with the underlying count. This figure is often asked in the same breath as the male-female distribution within the workforce, as both fall under the same category "staff composition" in the core module. If a central register of collective bargaining agreement application per employee is missing, that in itself is a reason to mark this item as outstanding until the count is available — estimating without underlying data produces no usable answer.

Where this appears: the personnel indicators in the core module

This question comes from the section on the organisation's own workforce in the core module of the VSME standard of EFRAG, where collective bargaining agreement coverage stands alongside other employment condition indicators, such as minimum wage and health and safety. That same module also asks whether the organisation pays all its employees at least the statutory minimum wage, and these two questions are often completed together because they come from the same HR source.