In a resolution of July 18, 2006 (- 1 ABR 36/05 -), the First Senate dealt with the legal institutions of collective bargaining responsibility and collective bargaining binding. These legal institutions are designed differently in terms of content, requirements, constitutional basis, substantive consequences and procedural treatment. Collective bargaining jurisdiction is the ability of an association that is capable of collective bargaining to conclude collective agreements with a specific scope. It is based on the association’s statutes. An association is fundamentally free to determine its collective bargaining jurisdiction. It can delimit them spatially, operationally, industry-related or even personnel-wise. However, employers’ or employees’ associations cannot effectively limit their collective bargaining responsibility to their respective members. The extent of the association’s collective bargaining responsibility would otherwise depend on the decision of individual members about their entry and exit. This would be incompatible with the requirements of a functioning collective bargaining system. With membership-related collective bargaining responsibility, the association would effectively not be able to conclude collective agreements whose scope would extend beyond the respective members. This means that the provisions in the TVG that are linked to collective bargaining no longer have any independent meaning. Being bound by collective bargaining agreements does not indicate a legal status of the association, but only affects the individual employer or employee. Their decision to join an association for the purpose of establishing collective bargaining agreement has no significance for the conclusion of a collective agreement and its scope. On the basis of this differentiation, the First Senate decided that an employers’ association is fundamentally not prohibited from providing for a form of membership in its statutes that does not lead to collective agreement in accordance with Section 3 Paragraph. 1 TVG leads. The Senate left it open whether such OT membership can be provided for without restrictions or whether and, if so, to what extent the OT members must be excluded from the association’s collective bargaining policy decision-making and what deadlines must be met for a change of status.