Content uploaded by Richard Croucher
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Richard Croucher on Apr 21, 2015
Content may be subject to copyright.
PRAISE FOR GLOBAL UNIONS, GLOBAL BUSINESS
‘is pathbreaking book provides both an invaluable resource on the history of global
union federations, and new insights on current issues and contestations. It will be of
great interest to all with an interest in the state of unions worldwide, commentators
and critics of globalization, and those concerned with fairness at work in a wide range
of contexts.’
Professor Geoffrey Wood, University of Sheffield
‘Powerfully argued and impressively documented, this stimulating book provides
a readable, insightful introduction to the challenges facing global trade unionism.
It will prove of tremendous value to both union activists and academics teaching
international business, international employment relations and HRM.’
Professor John McIlroy, Keele University
‘is book is an excellent example of public social science. Focused principally on
global union federations it is historically informed, empirically rich and argues
that the key to international union renewal and success is education (informed by
research). I most strongly recommend it.’
Professor Peter Fairbrother, Cardiff University
‘Elizabeth Cotton and Richard Croucher have written the essential guide to
international trade unionism: its actors, its structure, its history, its functions, its
activities. I know of no other recent book that details as clearly what the international
trade union movement actually does and why it is important for workers everywhere.
Its weaknesses are not glossed over but Cotton and Croucher have proposals on how
these can be addressed. A must read for trade unionists and for activists in the global
justice and solidarity movement.’
Dan Gallin, Global Labour Institute
GLOBAL UNIONS,
GLOBAL BUSINESS
GLOBAL UNIONS,
GLOBAL BUSINESS
RICHARD CROUCHER
AND
ELIZABETH COTTON
Global Union Federations and
International Business
First published in 2009 by Middlesex University Press
Copyright © Richard Croucher and Elizabeth Cotton
ISBN 978 1 904750 62 8
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval
system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright holder for
which application should be addressed in the first instance to the publishers. No liability
shall be attached to the author, the copyright holder or the publishers for loss or damage of
any nature suffered as a result of reliance on the reproduction of any of the contents of this
publication or any errors or omissions in its contents.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from e British Library
Cover design by Helen Taylor
Typesetting by Carnegie Publishing Ltd
Printed in the UK by Ashford Colour Press Ltd
Middlesex University Press
Fenella Building
e Burroughs
Hendon
London NW4 4BT
Tel: +44 (0)20 8411 4162: +44 (0)20 8411 4161
Fax: +44 (0)20 8411 4167
www.mupress.co.uk
Contents
Preface viii
List of Tables, Diagrams and Maps ix
List of Initialisations and Acronyms xi
Part 1: Contexts
Chapter One: Introduction 3
Chapter Two: Globalisation and Unions 12
Chapter ree: Past and Present – the History of International
Trade Unionism 23
Part 2: e Work of the Internationals
Chapter Four: e Internationals – Governance and Resources 39
Chapter Five: International Collective Bargaining 57
Chapter Six: Networks 69
Chapter Seven: International Union Education 80
Chapter Eight: Case Study – a GUF’s Relationship with a
Multinational Company 95
Part 3: Conclusion
Chapter Nine: e Political Decision 115
Annex 1 121
Annex 2 126
References 130
Index 144
Th i s book is aimed at all those interested in the experience of working people
in the current phase of globalisation. We have incurred debts to many
such people in writing it. Experts in international business, corporate social
responsibility, international trade unionism and others have generously shared
information and their thoughts with us. We therefore thank Mare Anceva, Ross
Brennan, Samar Badar Al-Husan, Alexandr Ivakhno, Aranya Pakapath, Cristhian
Rivas, Carlos Bustos, Wolfgang Weinz and Fabian Nkomo.
A group of specialists in different aspects of our subject kindly read and
commented on an earlier version, and we are grateful to Paul Gooderham, Rebecca
Gumbrell-McCormick, John McIlroy, Ingo Singe, David Cockroft and Dan Gallin.
We are especially grateful to Ifan Shepherd, who prepared the maps and diagrams
for publication with characteristic good humour and patience, to Jane Tinkler for
her help in navigating the LSE library and John Callaghan who kindly edited a
late version of the manuscript. Any remaining inaccuracies are the authors’ joint
responsibility.
Finally, we thank all those trade unionists who have discussed these subjects with
us over the years. We hope they will find the book a fair and useful account of their
remarkable work.
Richard Croucher
Elizabeth Cotton
Preface
List of Tables
Chapter One
Table 1: List of Global Unions, 2008 7
Chapter Two
Table 2: Key Multinationals Supplying Labour 19
Chapter ree
Table 3: Number of ITF-affiliated Organisations by Region, 1946 and 1964 32
Chapter Four
Table 4: Regional Distribution of Executive Positions in Relation to
Membership in the ICFTU, 1972–2003 42
Table 5: Numbers of Staff Employed by the Internationals, 2004 45
Table 6: ICFTU Declared and Paying Membership by Region, 1998 and 2003 51
Table 7: ICFTU Actual Fees Received per Region, 1998 and 2003 52
Chapter Five
Table 8: International Framework Agreements, Mid-2008 58
Table 9: References to International Framework Agreements in
Selected GUF Publications 63
Chapter Six
Table 10: e Nestlé Network 76
Table 11: Interpretive Summary of Five Networks 78
Chapter Seven
Table 12: Typical Target Groups, Subjects, Aims, Forms and Results of
International Trade Union Education 83
Table 13: Estimated Bilateral/Multilateral Allocation of Trade
Union Development Funds, 2004 87
Chapter Eight
Table 14: Anglo American plc – Business Overview, 2004 97
Table 15: Anglo Coal – Preliminary Cost Benefit Analysis of Providing ART 98
List of Diagrams
Chapter One
Diagram 1: National and International Levels of Trade Unionism 6
Diagram 2: GUF Functions 8
Chapter ree
Diagram 3: Timeline – the History of the International Trade Union
Movement 25
Chapter Eight
Diagram 4: Anglo American and its Relationships to other Main Players 95
List of Maps
Chapter Two
Map 1: Freedom of Association in the World 15
Chapter Four
Map 2: Locations of Internationals’ HQs 40
Map 3: Locations of Internationals’ Offices 40
Map 4: Locations of Project Offices 41
List of Initialisations
and Acronyms
AA Anglo American plc (Company)
ACFTU All-China Federation of Trade Unions
AFL-CIO American Federation of Labour-Congress of Industrial Organizations
AFRO African Regional Organisation (of the ITUC)
AGA Anglo Gold Ashanti (Company)
ART Antiretroviral erapy
ARV Antiretrovirals
BASF Badische Anilin und Soda Fabrik (company)
BWI Building and Wood Workers’ International
CGIL Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro
(Italian Confederation of Trade Unions)
CGT Confédération Générale du Travail
(French Confederation of Trade Unions)
CIS Commonwealth of Independent States
CSR Corporate Social Responsibility
CTA Central de Trabajadores Argentinos (Argentinian National Centre)
CUT Central Unitaria de Trabajadores (Colombian National Union Centre)
EI Educational International
EPZ Export Processing Zone
ETUC European Trade Union Confederation
EWC European Works Council
FDI Foreign direct investment
FES Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (German Friedrich Ebert Foundation)
FNPR Federatsiia Nevasymykh Profsoiuzov Rossii
(Federation of Russian Trade Unions)
FNV Federatie Nederlandse Vakbeweging
(Dutch Confederation of Trade Unions)
FOC Flags of Convenience
GATT General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
GBC Global Business Coalition
GFA Global Framework Agreement
GMWU Ghana Mineworkers’ Union
GUF Global Union Federation
GURN Global Unions Research Network
HRM Human resource management
ICEF International Federation of Chemical, Energy and General
Workers’ Unions (1946–1995)
ICEM International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and
General Workers’ Unions (1995–)
ICFTU International Confederation of Free Trade Unions
IFA International Framework Agreement
IFBWW International Federation of Building and Woodworkers
IFCTU International Federation of Christian Trade Unions
IFJ International Federation of Journalists
IFTU International Federation of Trade Unions
ILO International Labour Office/Organization
IMF International Metalworkers’ Federation
ISF International Shipping Federation
ISNTUC International Secretariat of National Trade Union Centres
ITF International Transport Workers’ Federation
ITGLWF International Textile, Garment and Leather Workers’ Federation
ITS International Trade Secretariat
ITUC International Trade Union Confederation
IUF International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant,
Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers’ Associations
IWMA International Working Men’s Association
LO Norway Landsorganisasjonen i Norge (Norwegian Confederation of
Trade Unions)
LO-FTF Landsorgasitionen I Danmark/Funktionærernes og
Tjenestemændenes Fællesråd, (Danish Confederation of
Trade Unions)
LO-TCO Landsorganisationen i Sverige/ Tjänstemännens Centralorganisation
(Swedish Trade Union Confederation)
MNC Multinational company
NGO Non-governmental organisation
NUM National Union of Mineworkers, South Africa (Union)
OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
OGWU Oil and Gas Workers’ Union, Azerbaijan (Union)
OPZZ Ogolnopolskie Propozumienie Zwiazkow Zawodowych, Poland (All
Poland Alliance of Trade Unions)
PCFT Petrol and Chemical Federation of ailand (Union)
PSI Public Services International
RILU Red International of Labour Unions
ROGWU Russian Oil and Gas Workers’ Union
SASK Suomen Ammattiliittojen Solidaarsuuskeskus
(Finnish Trade Union Foundation)
TUC Trades Union Congress, UK
UNCTAD United Nations Conference on Trade and Development
UNDP United Nations Development Programme
UNI Union Network International
USWA United Steel Workers of America (Union)
VCT Voluntary counselling and testing
VWWC Volkswagen World Works Council
WCL World Confederation of Labour
WFTU World Federation of Trade Unions
GLOBAL UNIONS, GLOBAL BUSINESS 1
I
Contexts
• CHAPTER ONE •
Introduction
We had been approached by phone calls from some crew members of the vessel
Little Kid-II, a Cambodian-flagged ship, saying that they were not being paid. We
spoke several times to the Ship Manager insisting that they pay all the money due
to the seafarers. e company totally ignored its obligations to the crew and did
not pay them when they were due, even though the rate they were paid was below
the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) rate.
On 20th of December 2006 we were informed by the seafarers that the vessel
was calling at Rostov-on-Don (Russia). We asked for the help of the ITF Actions
and Claims Unit in London, and following their detailed advice contacted their
Russian colleagues. We advised the ITF affiliate, the regional organisation of the
Seafarers’ Union of Russia (SUR) of the situation, asking for their assistance. At
the same time we recommended that the seafarers spoke to SUR, and supplied
them with the contact details. We and SUR recommended the crew members
to organize protest actions. To help the seafarers in these actions two SUR
representatives were sent on board (Mr. Zenkovskiy, head, and Mr. Petchenko).
e port authorities, frontier guards and the company itself were alerted to the
coming actions. e guards put obstacles in the union’s way. e vessel’s captain
put pressure on the crew aimed at getting them to abandon their action and
promising to pay out the balance of the wages due later, in Istanbul and trying not
to permit the union’s representatives to come onboard. Later the frontier guards
just took back SUR’s permissions to enter, but they went on contacting the crew
by phone and outside of the port persuading them to go on with the actions.
is, and the knowledge that the ITF was watching the case, inspired the seafarers
to continue their sanctions. It took several days, but finally the company gave in
when they received evidence that they had no choice but to pay out the wages,
and they knew the ITF was involved.
Extract from an interview with Alexandr Ivakhno,
Ukrainian Seafarers’ Union, 20 January 2008
4
is book analyses the work of the Global Union Federations, illustrated in our
opening quotation, and makes suggestions for their re-orientation. We discuss the
current position of the trade union movement’s international institutions, their
internal lives and their relations with companies. e book is therefore a contribution
to a widely overlooked aspect of globalisation.
Unions remain by far the largest membership organisations in the world and
have extensive international coverage, dwarfing non-governmental organisations
(NGOs) also engaged with the impact of globalisation. Although NGOs are often
regarded more positively than unions, they rarely have membership structures and
generally rely on unelected professionals (Edwards, 2001; Batliwala, 2002). In terms of
democratic involvement, unions provide much greater opportunities for members to
determine policy and play a part in organisational governance. Despite some historic
cases internationally of corruption, trade unions have long and proud traditions of
democratic processes. ey provide a substantial proportion of working people with
opportunities for political involvement, and for shifting power relations at work.
is aspect of unionism has taken on renewed importance with the development of
global trade. Nevertheless, we also argue that without change in the ways that the
international institutions of the trade union movement operate, the existing power
dynamics will remain intact and globalisation will continue to operate in negative
ways for many workers.
Our primary focus is on the global union organisations themselves, significant but
little-studied actors in the construction of the beginnings of an international system
of industrial relations. e work of these organisations is important in coordinating
union responses to longstanding distributive and procedural justice issues that
have been exacerbated by globalisation. Real possibilities exist for international
trade unionism to build its position within these discussions. e distribution of
wealth and access to resources such as health and education within countries is
central to current debates around development, and unions are relevant because
of their redistributive capacity. As Elliott and Freeman (2003) argue, the ‘missing
voice’ in these debates is that of workers in developing countries. Unionisation
has a major contribution to make in rectifying that position. Unions have many
positive outcomes for workers, facilitating collective voice mechanisms that help to
increase their earnings and reduce earnings differentials, including gender earnings
differentials (Freeman and Medoff, 1984; Weichselbaumer and Winter-Ebner, 2003).
ey help to enforce the law in workplaces (Harcourt et al., 2004). e benefits
they bring to society more generally are well established. Unions internationally
gave birth to many other cooperative, mutual and adult educational organisations,
building civil society and promoting ‘democratic development’ (Stiglitz, 2000).
Stiglitz linked this to the way that unions have historically played a major role
in providing opportunities for democratic involvement, including by addressing
workers’ needs to improve their wider understandings through education.
CON TE XTS
5
Many international companies are involved in a quest to show that they have
‘fair’ labour practices without recognising unions. ese quests involve increasingly
elaborate and ineffective methods of monitoring themselves and their suppliers, for
example by finding NGOs that will attest to the humanity of their practices through
inspection processes and so on. It then appears to be a matter of surprise to them
that there is a persistent pattern of rediscovery by investigative journalists showing
that in fact these problems have not been resolved. e harsh reality is that for many
of the world’s workers, talk of human rights in the workplace is just that: it is strictly
rhetorical (Douzinas, 2000; Beirnaert, 2008). It is evident that only stable union
organisation within workplaces can begin to deal with both rights and distributive
issues on an ongoing basis; no monitoring or inspection system can hope to match
such organisation.
Our subject is important precisely because of trade unionism’s widespread decline.
e fall in union membership in most countries is caused primarily by objective
circumstances: massive restructuring in global capitalism that has hugely disrupted
well-unionised industries and created weak negotiating positions for workers. Both
have of course been facilitated by the rise and dominance of neoliberal ideas.
Unions’ difficulties are inextricably linked with the problems faced by workers
across the world. Labour’s share of total income has been falling in the developed
countries for some years. In the UK, labour took a rising share of national income for
the century up to 1970, but this trend has now been reversed (Glyn, 2006). is is not
only because of the expanded world labour supply; it is also partly because of relatively
low levels of investment. Further reasons are found in: the new international division
of labour; the ever present threat of relocation; the development of different forms
of human resource management; the widespread adoption of Japanese production
models; lean production; ‘High Performance Work Systems’; and the pursuit of
free trade policies by the international financial institutions (Upchurch, 2008). e
pursuit of flexibility has become a catechism for employers, with a ‘normal’ model
of full-time employed workers employed by one company probably now looking
abnormal from a global perspective. Employees’ grip on their jobs has been loosened:
even in Japan and South Korea, for many workers, lifetime employment has been
eroded and replaced by precarious work forms. e widespread creation of ‘informal’
work has created a large pool of almost exclusively non-union workers. is in turn
threatens unions’ legitimacy in their wider function as representatives of the wide
interests of labour rather than of particular groups of employees.
e veteran trade unionist Hans Gottfurcht, a leader with enormous experience
of international union affairs wrote on our subject in the mid-1960s, and his
accounts exuded optimism (Gottfurcht, 1962; 1966). Trade unions, he proclaimed,
‘stand in the centre of world events’ (1966: 12). ere were objective grounds for his
up-beat statement: trade unionism stood at an historically high level, and between
the publication of his books in 1962 and 1966 an internationally coordinated strike
INTRODUCTION
6
involving the chemical workers’ international occurred. It is hard to see similar
grounds for optimism today. Multinational companies’ growing power and the
reduction in labour’s share of global product both point in a more pessimistic
direction. Despite much discussion of ‘union renewal’, the historic institutions of
the labour market – trade unions and employers’ associations – have been in retreat
in most countries for several decades. ese developments affect unions’ capacity
to act in workers’ interests at all levels, including the international. J.K. Galbraith
(1983) noted that historically, great concentrations of power such as that collectively
wielded by large corporations today tend to produce countervailing forces. Whether
the union internationals can constitute such a force, or even be one element in a
wider coalition, is an open question that is explored below.
e broad family of international trade union institutions consists of the Global
Union Federations (GUFs) and the International Trade Union Confederation
(ITUC).
Diagram 1: National and International Levels of Trade Unionism
GUFs are distinguished by industrial sector, with national unions from over one
hundred and twenty countries affiliating to them. Harold Lewis, ex-general secretary
of the international transport workers has argued that GUFs account for 80 per cent
of the international movement’s activity, and at least 90 per cent of its work directly
affecting workplaces (Lewis, 2003). e sectors covered range from education where
Education International represents teachers, to transport, where the International
Transport Workers’ Federation is active. e GUFs are diverse organisations which
share many characteristics. ey can be grouped into three categories. e first
is those with a private sector membership and an industrial and bargaining focus
(BWI, ICEM, IMF, IUF and UNI). e second category (IFJ and ITGLWF) also
have private sector members, but have less bargaining focus because they have a
CON TE XTS
7
weak and unstable membership base. e third (EI and PSI) encompasses public
sector unions, which relate mainly to international governmental organisations and
national governments and have solid membership bases. In this book, the focus is on
the first two categories because they operate primarily in the private sector.
Table 1: List of Global Unions, 2008
Global
Union
Main Sectors
Covered
Estimated
Total
Membership
(Millions)
Total
Number of
Aliates
Number of
Countries
Covered
Estimated
Number of
Developing
Country
Aliates
Estimated
Percentage of
Developing
Country
Aliates
ITUC Umbrella body 168 311 155 190 61
EI Education 30 394 171 189 48
IMF Metalworking 25 200 100 Unknown Unknown
ICEM Chemicals,
energy, mining,
paper
20 379 117 182 48
PSI Public ser vices 20 650 160 323 50
UNI Telecoms,
graphics, media,
retail, ser vices
15.5 900 140 Unknown Unknown
BWI Construction
and materials
12 318 130 Unknown Unknown
ITGLWF Textiles,
garments,
leather goods
9 238 122 163 68
ITF Transport 4.5 654 148 63 10
IUF Food,
agriculture,
catering,
tourism
2.6 375 127 206 55
IFJ Journalism 0.6 117 100 43 37
Source: Union websites
e book also touches on the work of the ITUC, created by merger in 2006,
which works with the GUFs. e ITUC affiliates national centres, is relatively
well resourced and is the largest umbrella organisation in the world. ese are
the established global organisations representing labour’s interests, which are
collectively referred to as ‘the internationals’. When we refer to GUFs alone, we
mean to exclude the ITUC.
INTRODUCTION
8
GUF functions can be split into three types. First, they defend the existing space
in which unions operate, for example by defending trade unionists’ basic rights
in extremely hostile environments. Second, they work to create further space, for
example by collective bargaining (Wills, 2002). is set of tasks currently looms
large in their own perceptions of their role even though GUFs have influence
rather than power in relation to companies. ird, they help unions to exploit these
spaces, primarily by building their capacities through educational and information
activities. ese functions are shown in Diagram 2.
CON TE XTS
Diagram 2: GUF Functions
e internationals are coordinating bodies that link, or articulate, unions at other
levels to each other and to international institutions and employers (Eder, 2002).
Although the GUFs are formally described as ‘global’, this represents an aspiration
rather than a reality since they are more accurately described as international bodies
with wide coverage that are ‘globalising’. ey have historically built outwards
from their European bases to include unions in other regions and are still engaged
in extending their coverage to every country where unions exist. e GUFs both
co-exist with and transcend the bilateral links that often spring up between
individual unions across the world. Central to our argument is the view that only
the multilateral frameworks provided by these international union institutions can
shift the balances of power that exist both between unions and between unions and
employers. For some, less institutionalised international links between unions are
often felt to be sufficient and even preferable. We argue against this view.
Despite over a century of activity many misunderstandings of the internationals’
roles are evident. Most people engaged in workplace industrial relations have little
knowledge or understanding of these organisations and many trade union members
are not aware that their unions are affiliated to them. e internationals have partly
themselves to blame: they are poor promoters of their own successes, operating
quietly even when real gains are secured for affiliates. However, it is important to
9
understand that, like other trade union bodies, they operate within harsh political
environments, invariably experience a hostile press and are therefore reluctant to
divulge information to the outside world. ey emphasise internal democracy and
accountability rather than external transparency. In the 2006 Global Transparency
Initiative, the ITUC was ranked last of all the non-governmental organisations
surveyed, with a 13 per cent transparency capacity. Data on their activities is
therefore very difficult to come by. ere is a need for greater information on these
bodies, and this is an important aspect of what we set out to achieve in this book.
Existing writing, with a few honourable exceptions, can be broadly divided into
two camps: advocates/advisers and critics. ose falling into the first have a firm
grasp of the realities of life in the internationals, often derived from experience
of working in them (see for example White, 2006). eir strength, an in-depth
knowledge of an organisation, can also be a weakness, however, since they are often
concerned uncritically to defend their institutions past or present. us, for example,
Chip Levinson (1972), ex-general secretary of the then International Chemical and
General Workers’ Federation (ICEF), tended to overstate its international bargaining
successes in the 1960s. In the second camp, some criticism is vehement, and is
marked by questionable argumentation. For example John Logue (1980: 24) referred
to ‘parasitic elite junketing’, which apparently involved ‘taking your pretty secretary
[or, for that matter, your plain wife] on expenses-paid trips’. is is integral to his
view that such junketing is a key reason for the longevity of this level of unionism.
ere is no shortage of writers with criticism and advice for trade unions but
much of it at the international level is of little value because it is founded on weak
empirical bases. In sharp contrast to unions at the national level, academics have
only infrequently enjoyed long-term or close relationships with the international
trade union movement. is is compounded by the lack of publicly available data
about the work of the internationals due in part to the levels of secretiveness which
they practice. In writing this book, for example, the authors often have to use ITUC
data as comparable material is not available (or where available is too imprecise)
for the GUFs – although we do so only when convinced that the two pictures are
similar.
We agree that what Lewis (2003) calls ‘the theoretical wasteland’ of international
trade unionism should be addressed. We make some contribution in this area,
focussing on education and its role, but the wider development of theory is not our
main purpose here. Rather, we try to present a realistic and empirically grounded
picture of the internationals in order to raise the quality of debate about their
future. We present new data on several aspects of the internationals’ internal lives
and external work in the global economy. ese data come from numerous sources.
First, they derive from over fifty formal and informal interviews with officials of
the internationals and union activists from many countries of the world. Second,
they have been drawn from a trawl of the internationals’ official and semi-official
INTRODUCTION
10
working documents. Many of the latter are not routinely available to outsiders, but
nor are they confidential and almost all of those referred to exist in the Library of the
Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Bonn. ese last data have been especially important
to us. ird, we have used the archival resources of the Modern Records Centre
at the University of Warwick, where the records of the International Transport
Workers’ Federation and other relevant organisations are deposited. Finally, we draw
on our own extensive personal records based on immersion in international union
work over a period of fifteen years, some directly for the internationals and some less
directly. We count many of those active in the international trade union movement
as friends, and part of what we analyse is our own activity.
e book is structured and argued as follows. e next two chapters constitute
the first section and provide background to the current situation. In Chapter two,
the context in which unions and the internationals operate is outlined, showing
why national unions are increasingly turning to the GUFs for assistance and
illustrating the considerable extent of the demands on them. In Chapter three, we
explore the internationals’ history, showing the distinctive legacy they draw on to
sustain them, and the significant new opportunities created by the end of political
divisions symbolised by the recent creation of the ITUC.
Our second section is concerned with the current position of the internationals
both internally and in relation to companies. In Chapter four, we analyse the
internationals’ resources and governance, explaining the twin problems of an
internal balance of forces weighted towards developed country unions and major
current financial issues. Chapter five examines their role in international collective
bargaining. We show that the International Framework Agreements that currently
play such a large role in their strategy are useful, but are generated by processes
that reflect the power relationships described in the previous chapter and hamper
their effectiveness. In Chapter six, we examine the company and regional industrial
networks established through the GUFs and we suggest how they may best be
built.
Chapter seven is concerned with education and is central to the book’s argument.
We propose that education is an important, polyvalent area of work that supports
all of the other activities outlined previously. Importantly, it has a democratising
effect by raising levels of participation in union affairs and could usefully be
expanded. We therefore reject the common suggestion within the internationals
that the GUFs’ main task should be international collective bargaining. Chapter
eight is intended both to illustrate and integrate our argument. It is also a
contribution to wider discussions of the dynamics of international business. An
extended case study, it shows how one GUF succeeded in building dialogue with a
major multinational company, combining GUF discussion with senior management
with organisation from below, strongly facilitated by educational work in Africa
and Latin America.
CON TE XTS
11
Our third section consists simply of the conclusion. We accept that developments
in the global political economy offer prospects for the internationals in building
more multifaceted forms of unionism (Fairbrother and Hammer, 2005). We argue
that this is best done using the educational approach we advocate which should be
developed, and partly funded by devolving fundraising to regions. is educational
work can most effectively be carried out by small groups of countries operating
together on a ‘minilateral’ basis within the internationals’ wider multilateral
framework.
Our conclusion is presented as a challenge to the internationals’ membership:
to raise their material contribution to the internationals, despite the current trend
in the opposite direction. e key players are the unions of the developed world,
and the issue is whether they are able to make the political case to their own
membership to intensify their commitment to internationalism.
INTRODUCTION
• C H A P T E R T W O •
Globalisation and Unions
Introduction
Th i s chapter highlights the difficult international environment in which unions
currently operate, without attempting a comprehensive analysis of global
capitalism and its effects on workers and unions such as that by Moody
(1997). It is divided into two sections. In the first, we sketch the consequences of
globalisation’s political dimension for workers and unions, stressing the weakening
of national employment regulation and the lack of any adequate compensatory
measures at global level. In the second, we examine both the problems and
possibilities created for unions by multinational companies’ practices. We conclude
that it is difficult for unions to solve their problems either at national level or through
bilateral links with other individual unions, causing them to increase the demands
they make on the internationals.
Globalisation
e definition and consequences of globalisation are contested (Gills, 2000). e
processes, it has been shown, require precise specification in more than one sense.
Rugman (2001) for example contends that the companies involved should be
conceptualised as ‘regional’, since many operate across only a few, often adjacent,
countries. Others suggest that the current wave of globalisation constitutes less of
a break with the past than is often supposed, since the internationalisation of trade
and multinational companies are long-term phenomena. e history of capitalism
has been characterised over three centuries by constant expansion in a geographical
sense and in terms of its extension to ever-wider areas of social relations (Sewell,
2008). Capitalism has long sought ‘spatial fixes’ to labour problems: where workers
become organised in one location, new locations are identified (Silver, 2003).
Between 1850 and 1914, the movement of capital, trade, immigration and flow
of information were all arguably more developed than today (Hirst and ompson,
2002), and this suggests a need to define the current wave’s specific features. One key
difference is that developing countries’ systems of protection from competition are
13
today weaker than under colonialism. As late as the immediate post-Second World
War years, strong American pressure to end the British system of imperial protection,
in favour of the current General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), was
effectively resisted (Toye, 2003). e current globalisation wave is characterised by
the international financial institutions’ discouragement of protectionist behaviours
by developing countries. Indeed, the financial aspects of globalisation have profound
consequences not only for national regulation, but also for companies and how
they access and manage labour. Opening economies to international trade has had
demonstrably negative effects on trade unions (Mosley and Uno, 2007).
If some have played down the globalisation phenomenon and sought carefully
to delimit its boundaries, another school of thought has emphasised the current
political influence and pervasiveness of neoliberal ideas. us, it has been argued
that the globalisation process should be understood more widely than simply the
unimpeded flow of capital and goods between countries, since it includes a wide
range of other phenomena and, in particular, a major political dimension (Carling,
2006). Globalisation is seen as rooted in liberal economic theory, whereby the
increasing liberalisation of trade is held to enhance wealth and to ‘develop’ those
parts of the world to which it extends. e perspective is especially relevant to
unionisation, whose fortunes have historically been strongly affected by the political
environment (Western, 1997).
In this accommodating climate, ‘free market’ organisations have moved on to
moral high ground previously occupied by others. Organisations like the Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation deploy considerable resources to present themselves
as having an increasingly ‘developmental’ role in the world economy (Blowfield
and Frynas, 2005), an agenda previously claimed by nationalism, social democracy
and their historic allies. ey propose a progressive, visionary, reforming agenda.
‘Development’ is seen by them not as the task of a developmental state in alliance
with unions, but of these charitable foundations, markets, multinationals and
increased trade.
From the late 1970s onwards, corporations sought new production locations
where costs could be reduced and products marketed, and the international financial
institutions created space for them by insisting on bi- and multilateral trade
agreements. ey pressured developing countries to reduce tariff barriers and
allow unrestricted flows of capital, products and services. Structural Adjustment
Programmes, repackaged as Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers, offered loan finance
from the 1980s onwards, on condition of major reform and, in particular, a reduced
role for the state. e ex-colonial powers are also implicated, as Stone (2004) showed,
by pushing African states towards the IMF when they insist on enforcing harsh
performance criteria as the condition of loans.
Many states shifted towards ‘free market’ politics, and the effects on both
employment and unionisation have been considerable. In Africa, for example,
GLOBALISATION AND UNIONS
14
they included the destruction of large parts of national healthcare and education
systems, weakening workers in the employment relationship by making them more
dependent on the health insurance and treatment that potentially came with formal
employment. Much of manufacturing industry was destroyed, reducing the scope
of and possibilities for unionisation. Unemployment rose dramatically in many
countries as public sector workers were dismissed. Currency devaluations reduced
real wages. Labour law was often revised in ways that were negative for trade unionism,
while formal laws protecting employees were unenforceable by emasculated states
(Wood and Brewster, 2007). Similar effects have occurred more widely. In many
countries, minimum wages have fallen into disrepute, so weakly enforced have they
become (Grindling and Terrell, 2005). Other pro-labour legislation has simply gone
unobserved. e South Korean Equal Employment Act 1987, for example, obliges
employers to provide facilities for childcare at workplaces, yet workplace childcare
constitutes only one per cent of the total number of these facilities (Moon, 2006).
In such cases, governments are clearly more concerned with employers’ reactions to
legal enforcement than with the legitimacy of their own law-making.
Symbolic of the current relationship between governments in the developing
world and multinationals has been the development of Export Processing Zones
(EPZs). ese are areas where foreign companies are encouraged through incentives
to operate and labour laws are either suspended or not enforced. ey have grown
considerably: by 2002 there were 3,000 EPZs employing more than 40 million workers,
the great majority of whom were young women (Abott, 1997; ICFTU, 2003). Attempts
to organise unions in EPZs have been met by violence from local security guards and
police (ICFTU, 2003). Lim (2005) argues that multinationals have not been ‘innocent
bystanders’ in determining the conditions that governments impose within EPZs.
e freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining, both Core
Labour Standards in the International Labour Organisation’s estimation, are under
growing threat at a global level. Many countries, including the USA, India and China
have refused to ratify the ILO conventions (87 and 98) that specify these basic rights.
We show the countries who have signed the conventions in Map 1. Even among the
surprisingly small number of signatory countries, there are several in which there
have been high levels of complaints that they have not been observed. e results for
unions are obvious. For the GUFs, this means an increasing volume and difficulty
of solidarity work, where companies and governments are the object of protest on
behalf of trade unions and their members alleging breach of these rights.
Recent legal changes in many countries have allowed employers to create fuzzy
employment relationships and diffuse and precarious forms of work. ese forms of
employment are strongly associated with the growth of informal work that is a further
distinctive feature of the current wave of globalisation. ‘Informality’ here means
disguised, ambiguous or poorly defined employment relationships where employers are
unclear or entirely absent (Chen, 2007). e phenomenon is very widespread: in Asia,
CON TE XTS
15
Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa, informal workers now constitute between 60
and 70 per cent of the total working population. Few of these workers operate in total
isolation from companies; their conditions are generally determined by the lead firm
in the value chain, either a large national or multinational company (Chen, 2007). A
pool of workers has therefore been created who find contract, agency or self-employed
terms relatively attractive. As Lourenço-Lindell (2002) graphically illustrates in her
detailed account of informal workers’ lives in Guinea-Bissau, many of whom also work
in the formal part of the economy when possible, they are ‘walking a tightrope’ where
falling off means being unable to sustain their livelihoods.
Although unions have made efforts to recruit those working informally, these
attempts have brought only very limited success (Verma and Kochan, 2004). e
barriers are formidable: fierce competition between individuals, the heterogeneity of
the workers involved and hard-line patriarchal attitudes are just a few of the problems
(Wood and Frynas, 2006). Anyemedu (2000) identified a central issue of concern to
unions in trying to organise these workers, that of high organising costs in relation to
any possible subscription income. e workers fear harsh retaliation from employers
and state officials if they join unions, threatening their very existence. Even if they
do join, they are unable to pay realistic union subscriptions.
e current wave of globalisation is also characterised by a dramatic increase
in the world labour supply. Vast amounts of extremely cheap labour, notably in
the former Soviet Union, China and India, are now available to companies. ere
has been a tripling of the labour available to multinationals from around one
billion people in 1980 to some three billion post-2000. is resulted not only
from the collapse of Communism, but also from the opening up of economies to
world capital and greater participation of women in waged labour (Munck, 2004).
GLOBALISATION AND UNIONS
Map 1: Freedom of Association in the World
16
Moreover, an increasing proportion of the labour has become mobile. ere are
currently an estimated 86 million migrant workers, who commonly have few legal
employment rights (Lowell, 2007; UNDP, 2008).
No global system of protective worker regulation has emerged to compensate
for the weakening of national systems and shift in power towards employers. While
a wide range of advisory documentation exists, from the long-standing OECD
guidelines for MNCs to the International Labour Organisation’s Core Labour
Standards, these are merely guidelines. As Hyman suggests, they are ‘weak and
largely tokenistic’ (Hyman, 2002: 1).
Multinational Companies
Multinational companies loom large in global union thinking for five sets of reasons.
First, they are engines of globalisation with high political profiles through their
role in linking investment, trade, technology and finance. Second, they are often
unionised in part of their operation and a foothold therefore exists that can be
deepened. ird, there is a demand from companies for GUFs’ work. e companies
themselves are aware of a need both to coordinate their human resource policies
worldwide and of the risks that labour issues pose for them. Extended value chains
with links into the informal economy increase their exposure to this ‘labour risk’.
Fourth, as our case study in Chapter eight illustrates, senior trade unionists and
MNC managers often have mutual long-term professional acquaintance. is may
come from previous industrial relations dealings, or from discussion on a relatively
equal and informal footing at the Davos World Economic Forum. ese contacts have
frequently established mutual knowledge of their organisations as well as personal
lines of communication. In short, they are far more accessible to GUFs than the
informal economy, helping to explain why a high proportion of GUF resources are
spent in targeting them. Fifth, dialogue with central management in international
companies is a significant, identifiable service that GUFs can offer affiliates.
However, just one per cent of the world’s workforce of three billion people is
employed by multinational companies (Köhler, 2003). At present, multinationals
remain a strictly limited phenomenon in geographic and employment if not in
trade terms. ey largely carry out their business in the Triad of North America,
Europe and Japan (Rugman, 2001). In 2005, all but four of the top 50 multinationals
were headquartered in the Triad, although multinationals have begun to emerge
from countries outside of it (UNCTAD, 2008). Many MNCs only expand to nearby
countries; for example, one of the world’s largest multinationals, the anti-union Wal-
Mart, has most of its foreign investments in Canada. Multinational investment in
the developing world is concentrated in Asia and Latin America (UNCTAD, 2008).
MNC incidence is also to some extent sectoral. e Russian food sector is dominated
by them, as are extractive industries in Africa, but their presence remains smaller
CON TE XTS
17
in developing countries’ railways. Multinationals are however growing: 73 million
people worked for them in 2006 compared with 25 million in 1990. e World Bank
projected that MNCs will increase considerably in extent and importance over the
next twenty-five years (World Bank, 2007). For unions, work in them may represent
as much an investment for the future as for the present.
As we noted above, the internationalisation of companies and trade has
been a long-run process spanning several centuries. e trading companies
of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century gave way to multinationals in
manufacturing, utilities, services and extractive industries that expanded greatly
in the inter-war years (Wilkins, 1974). e largest and most rapidly expanding
activity in the 1950s and 1960s was in the colonial world’s extractive industries
(Jones, 1993). However, as Wilkins (1974) shows, these companies were rarely
sufficiently powerful to challenge governments. In fact, governments actively
sought on occasions to restrict strongly their operations and even expropriate
them. In 1938, the Mexican oil industry, previously the preserve of multinationals
was nationalised, providing a niche for Mexican unions, in a successful operation
that provided a model for other countries. Costa Rica operated a system of state
monopoly over the importation and marketing of petrol throughout the 1920s and
1930s (Odell, 1968). From the mid-1950s to the early 1970s many countries such
as Egypt, Algeria and Burma, expanded their state sectors as nationalisations were
carried out in areas considered vital to their national economies. Current ‘resource
nationalism’ is a real force but generally stops short of nationalisation.
In a growth wave from the 1970s onwards, MNCs greatly increased their
economic activity; by the early 1990s their accumulated sales were equivalent to
one-third of the world’s gross product (Buckley, 2000). ese corporations ushered
in the current era, since they were operating in a diversified set of industries, with
an increasingly strong emphasis on services (Rugman, 2001; UNCTAD, 2008). eir
influence on governments now came to be seen in stronger terms than previously;
the end of the Cold War meant that there was no alternative to attempting to
attract their investment. eir control of advanced technology means that their
presence is now seen as a requirement for development; as a result, multinationals
have become ‘rule givers’ in relation to governments (elen, 2006).
Multinationals, and especially US-based companies, argue publicly and privately for
the relaxation of employment law. e changes in labour law recently enacted by the
Chinese government, the Employment Contract Law 2007 and the Labour Disputes
Arbitration Law 2007, which included some clauses providing the state unions with the
opportunity to acquire some representative functions brought vigorous protest from
the American Chamber of Commerce and threats that companies would disinvest.
e equivalent organisation in Germany similarly presses for relaxations in labour
law (Singe and Croucher, 2004). However, as the Chinese example shows, nation
states continue to legislate in employment areas in ways not approved by international
GLOBALISATION AND UNIONS
18
business. e nation state is therefore not always anxious simply to attract foreign
investment at any price and outcomes are negotiated even if the balance in the
negotiation has swung towards foreign companies.
Multinationals are popular employers in host countries. e differential paid by
MNCs over local companies, after controlling for the industry involved, is large,
and largest where average wages in the host countries are lowest. In the lowest
income countries, employees in US-based multinationals earn twice as much as
those in domestic companies (Graham, 2000). Differentials are especially marked
in relatively hi-tech or high value-added sectors (Flanagan, 2006). Shell and BP,
widely criticised for their activities in Nigeria, are nevertheless pay leaders in
that country (Otobo, 2007). ese advantages are often multiplied by access to
company-based or assisted education and healthcare.
MNCs use much more labour than they employ, as capital markets impose
performance regimes that demand cost reductions and push them towards accessing
pools of cheap, ‘informal’ labour (Morgan and Kristensen, 2006). In addition, new
forms of finance seek rates of return higher than those traditionally expected by
investors (as they are often legally obliged to do), and simultaneously to escape
even stock market regulation. An important form of such finance is ‘private equity’,
and it has been estimated that some 20 per cent of the UK’s non-public workforce
is employed by these vehicles (Rossman and Greenfield, 2006). Private equity’s
influence clearly raises investors’ expectations of appropriate rates of return and
erodes commitment to other stakeholders. It has been shown that private equity has
raised rates of redundancy across the world (Hall, 2008).
eron (2005) uses the term ‘externalisation’ to encompass the different ways of
obtaining labour from outside of the corporation’s boundaries. Its extent at global level
has unfortunately not been the subject of any systematic investigation (Mosley and
Uno, 2007). Labour outsourcing is increasingly being required of local management
by multinationals’ central managements (Westney, 2008). Externalisation virtually
removes the direct claims that workers can make of them. Externalised workers are
rarely protected by law in the same ways as ‘standard’ workers, because in almost all
countries the law envisages a ‘standard’ employment relationship. Externalisation
takes many forms, many of which are in reality not discrete, and its incidence and
damaging consequences for workers and unions alike have been widely remarked
on by researchers examining the developing world (Wood and Brewster, 2007; von
Holdt and Webster, 2005; eron, 2005). e creation of ‘value chains’ from the
MNC at the top down to tiny family concerns, sub-contractors or individual ‘own
account’ workers inexorably drives the overall share of labour in company earnings
downwards (Barrientos, 2002). e ends of these chains contain a good deal of
‘labour risk’ for companies. An American researcher linked cars sold in Canada back
through car manufacturing multinationals to the Brazilian steel industry and slavery
in the Brazilian charcoal industry (Bales, 2004).
CON TE XTS
19
us, the multinationals are linked, both directly and indirectly, to the ‘informal’
economy. Intermediaries have oiled the wheels of this process. In many countries
legislation was enacted in the 1980s that facilitated the activities of labour agencies
(Glyn, 2006). us, even in highly regulated Germany, the number of agency workers
has risen from just over 100,000 in 1993 to 630,000 in 2007 (Bundesinstitut fűr
Arbeit, 1993; 2007). Seventy per cent of the workers used by Nestlé to manufacture,
package and distribute products throughout the world are not directly employed by
that company (Rossman and Greenfield, 2006). As we noted above, reliable global
figures on the extent of externalised labour do not exist (ILO, 2007) but their
growth may be simply illustrated by the extent of the multinational companies that
supply it, shown in Table 2 below:
GLOBALISATION AND UNIONS
Table 2: Key Multinationals Supplying Labour
Multinational 200 4 2006/7
Adecco 5,800 oces 7,000 oces 2007
Manpower 4,300 oces 4,400 oces 2007
Vedior * 2,200 oces 2,433 oces 2006
Randstad 1,827 oces 2006
2,670 oces 2007
Note: * Vedior was purchased by Randstad in December 2007
Source: ICEM (2004); company annual rep orts and websites
e labour-supplying multinationals whose empires are indicated in Table 2 are
clearly only the formal, visible part of labour contracting; a wide range of labour
suppliers in the developing world constitute the submerged part of that iceberg.
ese intermediaries form part of a nexus of corruption in obtaining contracts,
criminality and violence in Colombia (Pearce, 2004). Lourenço-Lindell (2002)
describes the extensive activities of agents called ‘headmen’ in Guinea-Bissau, who
first negotiate for work from employers in competition with other headmen, and then
select labour and supervise tasks.
ese work forms condition workers’ and managers’ expectations of acceptable
standards of terms, conditions and treatment. In direct employment terms, MNCs
can thus remain ‘model’ employers, and ‘employers of choice’, while distancing
themselves from their suppliers and indeed the suppliers of suppliers where
conditions are very different. e minority of employees in the company’s direct
employment are well aware of their privileged status. MNCs are able to raise
productivity partly because they tie employees into their ways of working. us,
many MNCs follow a dual policy: ending or avoiding the employment relationship
for the majority of employees, and improving pay to well above local levels for the
20
minority they choose directly to employ. is is a new aspect of the current wave
of globalisation.
ere are however limits to the process. e extent to which it can be required
depends on the extent to which the company’s success is perceived as reliant on
developing the long-term commitment of its labour force. It is only minimally
practised in some high value-added companies such as the German-owned motor
manufacturers. ese operate with a more cooperative labour paradigm which
facilitates union involvement and employee representation at all levels.
Multinationals’ direct policies in relation to unions reflect at least to some
extent their countries of origin. US-based companies favour countries where wages
are lower, where it is easiest to shed labour and the industrial relations environment
is seen as benign (Cooke, 1997; Bognanno et al., 2005). e last characteristic is
measured in terms of the extent of local union influence, though MNCs are more
favourably disposed to company-based forms of representation such as works
councils. As we show in Chapter five, European-based multinationals are relatively
friendly towards unions. is is related to the form of human resource management
(HRM) that they adopt and the extent to which they attempt to dictate the form
from the company’s headquarters. ere are essentially two forms of HRM. One is
‘collaborative’. is has a developmental or humanistic focus, where employees are
seen as partners or collaborators. On the other hand, there is ‘calculative’ HRM in
which employees are treated as a resource. Calculative HRM centres on the accurate
measurement of employee contributions to the firm, and the adoption of individually
based reward systems (Gooderham et al., 1999). It sidelines unions since individual
pay is not conducive to traditional forms of collective bargaining.
In Europe, foreign companies (which are mostly US-based) more commonly
follow ‘calculative’ HRM than domestic companies (Gooderham et al., 1999;
2006). US-based companies in less-skilled sectors tend to follow centralised
union exclusion policies. us, McDonald’s has successfully resisted unionisation
in many national contexts (Royle, 2005; 2006). In the failed attempt to unionise
the McDonald’s greenfield food processing factory in Moscow, the few activists
involved received significant material, publicity and moral support from the global
union, the IUF (Royle, 2005). McDonald’s may constitute an exceptional company,
but similar policies have been applied by other US-based companies with relatively
low-skilled workforces such as Wal-Mart, even in highly regulated Germany
(Köhnen and Glaubitz, 2000). In Ireland, they follow similar policies largely through
setting up on greenfield sites (Turner et al., 2002).
Anti-union policies pushed by central managements may occasionally be resisted
at local level. A recent work suggests that local managers can defend and advance
subsidiaries’ influence in alliance with unions. Kristensen and Zeitlin (2005), in their
study of APV, a manufacturing multinational based in the UK with subsidiaries
in the USA and Denmark, argue that the Danish subsidiary achieved a strategic
CON TE XTS
21
role in the company by using their links to many different local actors. e union
was a key ally for local management, helping improve the company’s access to
skilled labour locally and actively helping management strategise. e prescription
these authors offer, of a MNC involved in facilitating dialogue between itself and
employees through representative institutions is, they admit, an unlikely prospect.
e setting was exceptionally favourable for such an alliance. e Danish model
provides considerable possibilities for union representatives not only through the
1973 law providing for employee representatives’ election to company boards, and
through European Works Councils, but also by well-established, historically deeply
rooted norms.
Outside such exceptional environments, and especially outside of the developed
world, local management pursues less union-friendly models than central
management. Even when written into collective agreements, local managers adopt
‘flexible’ interpretations of relatively clear rights such as those to freedom of
association and collective bargaining. e latter may be formally espoused at
headquarters level, and then, to adopt the terms used by a team of management
scholars, ‘ceremonially’ adopted or ‘lost in translation’ locally (Fenton O’Creevy
et al., 2007). us, for example, managers in countries such as Russia and Mexico,
where company-based unions are widespread, interpret allowing company unions
as complying with central values favouring the freedom of association. ey thereby
marginalise or exclude forms of unionism centred on mobilising workers and
meaningful bargaining. In Russia, this entails, at worst, union forms designed to
discipline workers and, at best, welfare-oriented unions. In this scenario, collective
bargaining consists of essentially administrative discussions about a ‘collective
agreement’ that specifies little and cannot be enforced.
Multinationals pose problems for unions at national level because of many
of these companies’ capacity to threaten to shift location, to play one unit off
against another and to distribute investment according to local performance.
ese possibilities are clearly more available in some sectors than others but
many MNCs, as we saw above, are currently located in services rather than in the
location-bound extractive sector and can therefore threaten this with credibility.
Martinez-Lucio and Weston (2004) have argued that even in the highly regulated
European context, the dynamics set up by this possibility are often very difficult
for unions to overcome.
In general however, and despite these problems, MNCs are relatively well
unionised in the developing world when compared to domestic companies. e
most systematic study of the subject demonstrates that they more readily recognise
unions, and direct investment by them brings better labour relations (Mosley and
Uno, 2007). eir importance also underlines the internationals’ significance to
national unions; the latter draw on the GUFs’ expertise in dealing with them.
e expansion of multinationals’ international reach serves to remind many trade
GLOBALISATION AND UNIONS
22
unionists, particularly in the developing world, of how intimately the fates of their
national unions and the internationals are intertwined.
Conclusion
e consequences for unions of the current wave of globalisation have been
severe. Many of the old certainties and structural supports for trade unionism
have been removed. e predominance of neoliberal economic ideas has reduced
union political influence. MNCs have become more assertive in relation to national
governments than in previous waves of globalisation, while the growth of informal
work has diminished union membership and economic power.
e possibilities of unions dealing with their problems at national level have
clearly decreased. National regulation has far less mileage than hitherto and unions
have therefore turned to the international level for solutions (O’Brien, 2000).
Developing country unions have also continued to develop bilateral links with
other unions, often from the ex-colonial countries. But these links are much less
likely to offer viable solutions since the internationals have greater capacity to
generate comprehensive information about multinationals. Nor do they occur
within the internationals’ democratic framework. Still less can links with a few
developed country unions offer prospects of organising among informal workers,
where these unions have little or no experience. ese resilient problems are better
addressed by the internationals, with their breadth of experience and expertise in
the developing world. Whether they have the resources or governance mechanisms
to address them in optimal ways is a question we discuss in Chapter four.
CON TE XTS
• CHAPTER THREE •
Past and Present – the History of
International Trade Unionism
Introduction
Th i s chapter deals with the history of the international trade union movement’s
institutions, to locate our contemporary analysis in that context. e history
of all these bodies is part of their organisational culture, as their headquarters’
walls covered with posters of twentieth-century campaigns demonstrate. Despite
some useful contributions, no adequate overall history of this level of trade unionism
exists. With a few honourable exceptions (exemplified by the work of Tony Carew
(1987; 2000; 2007) Rebecca Gumbrell-McCormick (2000a; 2000b; 2001; 2004)
and Marcel van der Linden (2000)), previous accounts have occurred in separate
‘historical’ and ‘current’ silos. Yet certain enduring themes are apparent, implying
profound structural issues. On the other hand, the current situation has novel
characteristics, not least because of the relative political unity of the world’s unions
after the collapse of Communism in 1989.
Our arguments in this chapter are as follows: first, history shows a significant
sequence in the formation of different bodies, reflecting their relative weight
in the thinking of national unions. Second, we argue that it is not the case, as
some have suggested, that the structures devised between the late 1890s and
1903 ‘remained largely unchanged’ in the twentieth century (van der Linden,
2000: 528). This refers simply to the dual structure with an international
umbrella organisation and industry-based bodies. It ignores the existence of
rival international structures for much of the twentieth century, which rendered
cooperation across the political divide next to impossible. The inception of
the division constituted a discontinuity of major importance. This political
division in the international union movement that appeared soon after the
Russian Revolution has now disappeared, creating new opportunities. Third, the
internationals have long, rich histories which have stamped their individual and
collective identities and, importantly, underpin a long-term view by unions of
payoffs from membership. Long organisational histories encourage affiliates to
see the benefits of affiliation in the long-term rather than to look for short-term
24
benefits. Finally, we suggest that a certain version of the history, emphasising
the internationals’ collective role in the fights against Fascism and Apartheid
functions as a sustaining resource.
Origins
e first wave of institutional international union cooperation occurred in the third
quarter of the nineteenth century, at the beginnings of an earlier intense phase of
globalisation. National markets had not yet been finally consolidated in Europe and
America and major imperial projects such as the ‘scramble for Africa’ had yet to
begin.
Marx’s international, the International Working Men’s Association (IWMA),
formed in 1864, therefore operated in a context in which the need for such a
body was less self-evident than it was later to become. Marxist language and
ideals live on as a set of shared reference points in international trade union
discourse, including in its symbols such as the singing of the Internationale at
some international union gatherings. The IWMA and its successors provided
intellectually powerful alternatives to the nationalistic, racially based and
imperialist ideas being pursued not only by employers and ruling élites, but
then accepted in wide sections of the trade union movement. These ideas found
expression in many damaging ways, including in racially based unions in many
parts of the world (Kirk, 2003).
Marx’s project attracted some affiliation and support from sections of the
European trade union movement, faced by employers importing cheaper foreign
labour from neighbouring countries. e IWMA also established relations (albeit
fractious) between political internationalists and trade unions, which paved the
way for the Second Social Democratic International. Trade union internationalism,
although not initiated by Marxists, therefore found its first institutional form under
Marxist leadership although, as Marx well knew, the policies of the IWMA were too
advanced and idealistic for the pragmatic British union leaders. is highlighted
what was to be a long-standing tension between the industrial interests and national
orientations of most union leaders on the one hand, and those of the more political
internationalists on the other (Collins and Abramsky, 1965). It already implied the
enduring question of precisely how strong or autonomous an international could
be: how much power would be ceded by national unions, fearful of having policy
determined by those holding an alternative conception? e issue’s significance was
underlined by the interest of rival political streams in international trade unionism
such as the anarchists and Christians.
CON TE XTS
25
Diagram 3: Timeline – the History of the International Trade Union Movement
International union movement World events
1864: International Working Men’s Association formed
1871: Delegates of Austrian, German and Scandinavian
shoemakers sign cooperation agreement
1876: International Working Men’s Association dissolved
1889: International Trade Secretariats of shoemakers,
printers, hat ters, tobacco workers formed
1897: International Transport Workers’ federation formed
1901: First conference of the International Secretariat of
National Trade Union centres held
1913: International Federation of Trade Unions founded
1914: Over one hundred International Trade Secretariats
in existence
1914: 33 ITSs in existence
1918–1920s: Many ITSs merge
1919: IFTU re- constituted
1919: International Federation of Trade Unions founded
1920: International Federation of Christian Trade Unions
(forerunner of WCL) formed
1921: Red International of Labour Unions founded
1937: Red International of Labour Unions formally
dissolved
1945: World Federation of Trade Unions formed
1949: International Confederation of Free Trade Unions
formed
1973: European TUC formed
2006: WCL dissolved to merge with ICFTU and form the
International Trade Union Confederation
1871: German victory in Franco -Prussian
War; Unication of Germany
1881: Second International founded
1914: Outbreak of First World War
1917: Russian Revolution
1918: First World War ends
1933: Nazis accede to power in Germany
1939: Outbreak of Second World War
1945: Second World War ends
1989: Soviet Union collapses
PAST AND PRESENT
26
The Emergence of International Sectoral and Umbrella Bodies
e formation of the Second (Social Democratic) International created the political
cohesion and contacts that precipitated the first international industrial organisations.
In many continental European countries, trade unionism was a project launched
by social democrats rather than, as in Britain, the reverse or, as in the USA, one
that never generated a Labour Party (Robert, Prost and Wrigley, 2004). is is
not to argue that the main concerns of the new international union organisations
were political, since the contrary was the case as they were primarily interested in
industrial matters. It is to suggest that the first viable institutions of internationalism
were formed on a non-Marxist basis that nevertheless inherited some of Marxism’s
internationalist rhetoric.
As we show in the timeline, highly skilled craft trade unionists together with
miners and textile workers were the first to initiate international organisations on
an industrial basis from 1889 onwards. ese were the GUFs’ predecessors, the
International Trade Secretariats (ITSs). e basis of the craft unions’ organisation
was strong occupational identities and capacity to restrict entry to their trades at
local and national level. ey felt a need for international coordination for pragmatic
industrial as well as for political reasons. Huge vertically integrated cartels were
emerging and expanding their international reach. Migrant labour was becoming
increasingly important and threatened to undercut national unions’ efforts, especially
in continental Europe. In Germany, whose expanding economy was sucking in
migrant workers from neighbouring countries, the issue was especially pressing and
the majority of ITSs were based in Germany from their inception up until Hitler’s
accession to power in 1933.
However, the basis for international union organisation was rickety. At the end
of the nineteenth century, national systems of trade unionism were still being
consolidated: in Britain there were still movements for local autonomy in craft
unions at the beginning of the twentieth century. In France, social democrats
‘implanted’ union organisation in rural areas (Robert, Prost and Wrigley, 2004). In
short, strong elements of regionalism within nations remained in the unions seeking
to establish international coordination (Dreyfus, 2000). e incomplete and uneven
internal development of national systems until 1914 therefore formed a basis for ITSs
founded on little more than information exchange and occasional mutual support
of strike action.
e development of ITSs within industry sectors both preceded and precipitated
the formation of an umbrella organisation for national union centres and reflects
their importance to pragmatic unions in dealing with emergent international
companies. e umbrella body began and continued as an organisation for more
directly political purposes than the ITSs. is was the case even if the German
and French unions that played a key role in establishing all of these bodies had
CON TE XTS
27
very different conceptions of the purposes and methods of trade unionism. ese
unions built the next international umbrella venture, the International Secretariat
of National Trade Union Centres (ISNTUC), to be renamed the International
Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU) in 1913. e British stood aloof, but by 1913 the
IFTU had grown to include twenty affiliated national centres, mostly in Europe but
including the USA and the Transvaal (Fimmen, 1922).
e IFTU did not go far beyond exchanging information; the French conception
of a more political and internationally solidaristic unionism was sidelined in favour
of the more institutional and information-sharing form advocated by the Germans
(Tudyka, 1983; Dreyfus, 2000). is remained influential in the IFTU even after the
First World War, since it allowed national union centres to learn about each other
and companies without being tied to any specific international policies.
By 1914, the current structure’s broad outlines were visible: a set of industrial
coordinating bodies, and an umbrella organisation bringing national centres together.
So, too, were at least three of the significant abiding issues: unions’ concern not to
cede power; tensions between forms of trade unionism; and real political differences.
e latter were soon to sharpen, generating a major and long-standing split in the
international movement.
Division in the Movement: the RILU
e First World War had been preceded by dramatic strike waves in Europe
that encouraged the development of revolutionary union ideas, or syndicalism.
is in turn encouraged many to imagine that the strike weapon could be used
for internationalist purposes. But the outbreak of war demonstrated the strictly
rhetorical nature of the Social Democratic Second International’s commitment to an
international general strike in the event of war. e First World War brought massive
political rupture. e Russian Revolution solidified the earlier breakaway of the
Communists from the Social Democrats, a division that was to last, with only a brief
interlude, for the next seventy years. is division was to be even more damaging
than the one that had already emerged between the IFTU and the International
Federation of Christian Trade Unions (IFCTU), whose relationship to the IFTU has
been characterised as ‘at times quite competitive and combative’ (Tosstorff, 2005:
401). us, sharp political and religious rivalries were both present in the world’s
trade union movement from an early stage.
e social democratic and business forms of trade unionism took steps to advance
and consolidate their position in response to a huge upturn in union membership
during the First World War. Between April 1919 and August 1921, twenty-nine ITSs
were established (van Goethem, 2000). e umbrella body also became much closer
to a global coordinating body than hitherto. e fourteen countries represented at
the founding congress of the IFTU in 1919 consisted essentially of the Europeans,
PAST AND PRESENT
28
plus the American Federation of Labour, self-appointed guardian of the Latin
American movements that had joined the recently formed Pan American Federation
of Labour (van Goethem, 2000; 2006). e Americans were determined to follow a
resolutely industrial path, but the Europeans defeated them, insisting on the need for
political action. But the IFTU, initially urged by the French CGT, was already taking
this type of action in initiating discussions (from which they were subsequently
excluded) that brought the establishment of the tripartite International Labour
Organization (ILO).
e ILO was an important institution that was to provide a major forum for
international labour issues. e IFTU, though disappointed at the watered-down
form that the ILO assumed, soon set to its enduring task of lobbying it to create
international labour standards (Tosstorff, 2005). e IFTU had thus helped create
much of the water in which it and its descendants the ICFTU and ITUC were to swim.
In 1921, the American Federation of Labour, dismayed at the political turn of events,
notified the IFTU that it had decided not to affiliate (Fimmen, 1922). is marked the
beginning of over two decades of widespread indifference among American unions
towards the international trade union movement that was only to be overcome at the
end of the Second World War. For the Communists, the same developments were
interpreted in quite a different sense: the formation of the ILO was a sign that the
mainstream unions had definitively sold out to the capitalist class.
In many countries, including Britain and the USA, the Communist parties
absorbed many of the pre-war syndicalists, thereby acquiring some of the best
and most active trade unionists. From the 1920s, the international Communist
movement built its separate union institution, the Red International of Labour
Unions (RILU). In 1921, the IFTU decided that any union affiliating to the RILU
could not be admitted to the IFTU (Fimmen, 1922). A minority in the IFTU, led by
its co-secretary and general secretary of the relatively well-developed International
Transport Workers’ Federation, Edo Fimmen, favoured opening a dialogue on the
appropriate structure for the international movement. Fimmen’s political outlook
was on the cusp of social democracy and Communism and coloured by syndicalism
(Buschak, 2002). To the consternation of many, he therefore advocated including the
Soviet unions in the discussion.
Labour’s Alternative
e issue was among those that brought Fimmen’s resignation as IFTU co-secretary;
it was only after resigning that he gained the freedom to write probably the
most important document ever written on the international movement’s structure,
Labour’s Alternative (1924). e majority of the work discusses developments in
international capitalism, which ‘imposed’ and ‘forced’ change on unions. Earlier
moves towards international cartels were now accelerating: ‘Huge, octopus-like
capitalist groups are extending their tentacles to grasp all the treasures of the
world…’ (p.10). Pre-1914, these only sought to dictate prices to consumers, but now
CON TE XTS
29
they sought to dictate the price of labour. He defined the internationals’ task as
bargaining collectively with these groups, a prelude to collectivising the means of
production through revolution.
For Fimmen, the IFTU–RILU division was central because it obstructed
coordinated bargaining; post-1950, this argument was proven highly relevant. Other
significant issues such as increasing the minimal involvement of women and colonial
workers in trade unionism would be assisted by overcoming that key problem.
Removing the division between the IFTU and RILU was, moreover, a condition for
releasing the resources required to bring a more truly international organisation into
being by persuading unions in the rest of the world to affiliate. Fimmen’s emphasis on
resources makes explicit an issue that remains relevant today. A new organisational
basis was needed for this merged IFTU; the ITSs were a key ingredient because they
mirrored capitalist organisation, but national union centres could not be ignored
and he therefore advocated a combination of national centres and ITSs as a basis
(pp.117–23). ere is a notable and probably politic ambiguity here about the precise
form that such an organisation would take, which allowed room for manoeuvre at
a later stage.
Fimmen’s ideas foundered on the very problem they addressed: the political split
between Communists and Social Democrats. He had written the work at a time
when it was still possible to argue as he did, because relations between the two
sides had not degenerated too far. But from the defeat of the British General Strike
in 1926 until the early 1930s, RILU encouraged breakaway unions and launched
savage attacks on the ‘reformist’ and (more commonly) ‘social fascist’ or ‘Amsterdam’
unions. is poisoned relations and ruled RILU out of any constructive dialogue
with either the IFTU or the majority of ITS affiliates. Fimmen, from his position in
the transport workers, was left to continue to try to improve relations between the
two warring sets of unions.
Free Trade Unionism and Communist Aliations:
from Divorce to Global Rivalry
From the mid-1920s, the unions throughout the international patchwork that was the
Soviet Union were decisively stripped of their independence and subordinated to the
Communist Parties. As Carew (1987) pointed out, Western unions were therefore
right to regard them as not being free trade unions, even if Communist-led unions
in the Western world could not be categorised in the same way. e Soviet unions
became ‘a school of Communism’ and a ‘transmission belt’ of Communist policy. In
the workplace, they became the welfare wing of management and exercised harsh
discipline on dissidents. Internationally, these unions became instruments of Soviet
foreign policy, as illustrated by the demise of the RILU itself. After the accession of
Hitler to power in 1933 and the German unions’ destruction, Stalin decided that a
more conciliatory attitude towards the Social Democrats and the mainstream trade
PAST AND PRESENT
30
unions was required. RILU, which had started life as a genuinely independent body,
was run down from 1934 onwards and quietly disbanded in 1937 because Stalin
regarded it as an obstruction to his foreign policy (Tosstorff, 2004).
e Nazi’s rapid demolition of the previously powerful German unions removed
an important element in the international movement and sent tremors through
the remainder. All of the ITSs, who had already been campaigning against Fascism
since 1924, and who supported the Italian resistance, played a significant role in
campaigning against Nazism. e ITF had demanded immediate action in defence of
the German unions in 1933 by the IFTU but were defeated by the opposition of the
German unions themselves (Simon, 1983; Reinalda, 1997). e ITF began publication
of a multilingual publication, Swastika (soon to become Fascism), documenting the
effects of Fascism on workers from 1934 to 1945. e transport workers’ extensive
worldwide networks were later used to good effect by the Allied governments in
espionage during the Second World War (Koch-Baumgarten, 1997). e ITF was also
the driving force in establishing a Joint Council of Propaganda between itself and the
metalworkers’ and miners’ internationals to propagandise for free trade unionism in
the occupied countries, an initiative that soon went beyond its original functions:
by 1944, the Council was sending delegates to liberated France to influence the re-
forming French unions.
e effects of Stalinism on workers were also understood in the international trade
union élite. Meeting in the context of widespread pro-Soviet feeling in Britain after
the invasion of the USSR, the Annual Meeting of the International Metalworkers’
Federation in August 1942 attended by exiled trade unionists from numerous
countries demonstrated their awareness. ey heard and accepted without demur a
speech by Sidney Parlett of the ILO, who argued that:
e Russian representatives at an international gathering would only voice policy
insofar as it found consent and endorsement from the Russian Communist Party.
If, therefore, the workers were going to fight for a Charter of trade union rights for
other countries, how could they rely on the unequivocal support of the Russian
trade unions?
(IMF, 1942)
e defeat of Nazism in 1945 brought a temporary and unstable unity in the
international trade union movement, when for a brief period Social Democratic
and Communist unions came together in the World Federation of Trade Unions
(WFTU). But as the Cold War set in, the split between the Social Democratic and
Communist streams re-established itself amid tumultuous and vituperative scenes
(Hogan, 1989). One of the causes célèbres was the degree of independence to be given
to ITSs; the Soviets argued for (and later adopted when they were left to themselves)
a structure in which the ITSs would be integrated into the world body as ‘trade
departments’. is, of course, would have meant ceding considerable industrial
CON TE XTS
31
influence to the Soviets, and was rejected; the ITSs were strongly opposed to having
their autonomy reduced in this way (Windmuller, 1954; McShane, 1992).
e US government strongly encouraged the American unions to step up their
activities in the international movement, and worked influentially against WFTU
across a broad material and ideological front (Windmuller, 1954; Carew, 1987).
However, as Denis McShane has argued, the European unions’ own experiences had
also been important in their rejection of Soviet influence (McShane, 1992). By 1950
WFTU was unquestionably dominated by the Soviet unions because major Western
unions had left (Koftas, 2002). e International Confederation of Free Trade Unions
(ICFTU) was formed on Anglo-American initiative and it and the WFTU went their
separate ways, beginning an increasingly bitter war for the political affiliation of
unions in the rest of the world. Both of them together with the third, relatively small
but aggressive, International Federation of Christian Trade Unions (later World
Confederation of Labour, WCL) now pursued their own rival agendas, competing for
affiliations and trying to establish their own structures throughout the world.
WFTU was also influential in global terms. In the 1950s, it gave considerable
material assistance to help found and maintain formally independent international
associations, notably the International Confederation of Arab Trade Unions and
the much stronger Congreso Permanente de Unidad Sindical de los Trabajadores
de America Latina. In Africa, WFTU, after initial criticism of the Organisation
of African Trade Union Unity, began to work closely with it (Lieβ, 1983). In India,
the All-India Trade Union Congress was an affiliate. In Europe, the largest union
confederations in France and Italy, the CGT and CGIL, were long-term full affiliates
until the latter moved to associate membership. e CGIL gradually distanced
itself from WFTU as part of a wider disillusionment on the part of Western trade
unionists with the effects of their affiliation. e CGIL moved away because of
declining strength and failure in its persistent efforts to secure unity in action in
relation to employers with the other Italian union organisations who were strongly
opposed to the CGIL’s international affiliation (Rogari, 2000). After 1968, this sort
of distancing became common among national unions.
e unions previously affiliated to IFTU formed a large part of the organisational
basis for the creation of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU)
in 1949. e new title both reaffirmed unions’ historic assertion of their independence
from employers and the state and stressed the difference between themselves and
unions in the Communist world. e ICFTU soon gained primacy within the
international trade union movement in its role as the ‘voice of labour’, because of its
use by governments as such in the restructuring of the post-War years (Gumbrell-
McCormick, 2001). Other parts of the international movement now entered a period
of steady increase in interest and affiliations. us, the Christian IFCTU expanded in
the developing world, establishing a regional organisation in Latin America in the mid-
1950s (Pasture, 1999). So, too did the ITSs, as we show for the ITF in Table 3.
PAST AND PRESENT
32 CONT EX TS
Table 3: Number of ITF-aliated Organisations by Region, 1946 and 1964
ITF region 1946 1964
Europe/Middle East 57 117
Latin America/Caribbean 5 99
Asia-Pacic 9 42
Africa 3 36
North America 3 18
Totals 77 312
Source: Lewis (2003: 360)
Regional organisations grouping countries together developed throughout the
world, first in the ICFTU and later in the ITSs, to reflect the interests of the
developing country membership within the international structures. eir creation
increased the diversity of unions involved in the international movement. ere
was a feeling among some affiliates that the ICFTU as a global organisation was
constantly trying to widen its functions beyond the coordinating role that they
thought it suited to, but that its basis made it difficult for it to help unions locally. In
1966, the British TUC’s international committee minuted:
If the question of starting afresh arose the TUC – taking experience as a
starting point – would perhaps not be in favour of establishing an organisation
such as the ICFTU with its present functions, nor disposed to accept that the
somewhat heterogeneous political attitudes of major ICFTU affiliates provide
a satisfactory basis for common and large-scale operations directed towards
developing countries.
(quoted in Carew, 2007: 163)
e judgement from the TUC’s international committee may have underestimated
the international movement’s work. rough their structures in the world’s regions,
the ICFTU and ITSs built widespread educational activity to develop the skills
and capacities of local unions to deal with their problems. e ICFTU had a long
tradition of such work and soon began to use its Solidarity Fund, first set up in 1957,
for educational purposes (Gottfurcht, 1966; Carew, 2000). A strong example of its
activity was the coordinated efforts by the ICFTU and six GUFs to develop cadres
in Indonesia in the late 1960s (Carew, 2000). Another example from this period
was the substantial educational work of the ICFTU in Africa. e calibre of those
carrying out this work was considerable; it was led by the Nigerian intellectual Wogu
Ananaba, author of an impressive history of the African trade unions (CISL, 1972;
33
Ananaba, 1979). is educational work also importantly allowed the internationals
to acquire detailed understandings of the world’s very different unions.
In Europe, the heartland of the international movement, the growth of structures
designed to coordinate European unions in part reflected an increasing feeling that
the ICFTU was providing too little for the unions of the developed world, one of the
underlying reasons for the Americans leaving it in the late 1960s (Carew, 2007). e
development of the European Union stimulated a proliferation of bodies both outside
and inside the existing organisations. e international movement was faced with
the development of essentially parallel structures in the form of European Industry
Federations and the European TUC. us, for example, between the late 1950s and
1983, nominally separate bodies for food, drink and tobacco workers existed both
inside and outside of the IUF (Buschak, 2003). WFTU hoped that the development
of these European-level bodies would improve relations with ICFTU affiliates, but
these hopes proved groundless (Lieβ, 1983).
For the ICFTU, creation of the ETUC led to the loss of its existing European body
(Gumbrell-McCormick, 2001). is created major tensions within the ICFTU as it
struggled to decide how to deal with the new phenomenon. Ultimately, it decided
not to take a position, which Gumbrell-McCormick (2000a) argues was a wise act of
diplomacy and not simply inertia, since it allowed the ICFTU to maintain the world
organisation’s unity albeit at considerable cost. However, for some national trade
union movements in Europe, the EU’s increasing pull ushered in a period of greater
orientation towards Europe to the exclusion of the rest of the world.
e international trade union movement was expanding beyond its hitherto
narrow geographical base, as each side in the Cold War was trying to recruit
unions. In Africa and Asia, unions often provided the mass base for nationalist
movements to fight for independence from the European imperial powers, and the
Americans and Soviets vied for their loyalty. e unions of Europe, the USA and the
USSR pursued what was at least in part a Cold War political agenda in the rest of
the world. Gary Busch (1983) argued that for the main governments involved, the
importance of international trade unionism was second only to military intelligence.
A consequence was that the ICFTU ruled out contact between itself and WFTU
despite the wishes of some of its affiliates (Lieβ, 1983).
In some parts of the ex-colonial world such as Africa, the Cold War had serious
consequences for trade unionism, weakening it wherever the US distributed economic
or military aid (Koftas, 2002; omson and Larson, 1978). Wedin (1991), in a
sensitive study of foreign union assistance in Latin America, shows how despite good
intentions, foreign interventions at this time had negative effects and even ‘victims’.
Foreign subventions on occasions reduced union democracy to a farce (Croucher,
2003). In Kenya, for example, the nationalist politician and trade union leader Tom
Mboya rapidly marginalised his political opponents with financial backing from the
USA, finally removing them from the Kenya Federation of Trade Unions (Hagglund,
PAST AND PRESENT
34
2007). In Japan, the Cold War also had important negative effects and the ICFTU
affiliates became identified with the occupier. By 1950, the Communist union
centre Sanbeyu was in the forefront of the Japanese trade union movement, but the
American Military Government stimulated a breakaway centre, Sohyo. In the early
1950s, the American Military Government dismissed large numbers of public sector
trade unionists in the name of removing Communist influence, but also included
non-Communist unionists. is initiated a period lasting right up until the collapse
of Communism, in which affiliation to the ICFTU or WFTU constituted a factional
issue within Japanese unions described as ‘damaging’ (Carew, 2000: 218). Despite this
sharp split, the ITSs were nevertheless able to provide a focus for coordinated action
between Japanese enterprise-based unions. In 1964, the International Metalworkers’
Federation established a Japan Council, playing a major part in establishing the
annual ‘spring offensive’ (Park, 1983).
A combination of political and industrial rivalries weakened ITS attempts to
confront the activities of multinationals. These attempts were the first signs that
the international union movement was moving decisively towards attempting
international collective bargaining despite the implied transfer of bargaining
authority from national to international level. Charles ‘Chip’ Levinson, general
secretary of the ICEF, seeking to raise the profile of his previously weak
ITS (Gallin, 1997), confirmed this as the international movement’s main task
(Levinson, 1972). The North American United Auto Workers and the West
German IG Metall pushed this agenda within the International Metalworkers’
Federation while the ICEF and the IUF developed international campaigns
directed at particular multinationals. World Company Councils were developed
in some companies in the 1960s by the IMF and ICEF. Yet significant unions in
France, Italy and India were excluded because they were affiliated to the WFTU
(Leiβ, 1983). By 1988, a new approach emerged that allowed the preservation of
national unions’ bargaining independence and the first International Framework
Agreement (IFA) was concluded by the IUF with BSN Danone in 1988 (Gumbrell-
McCormick, 2000a; 2004; Wills, 2002).
e ITF was meanwhile pursuing international collective bargaining in the
shipping industry with rather more success. e ‘Flags of Convenience’ (FOC)
campaign, initiated in the late 1940s gathered momentum in the 1960s and began to
bite in the 1970s. e campaign had political and industrial thrusts, and succeeded
in enforcing minimum standards of pay in many of the world’s ships. We expand on
the FOC campaign in Chapter five.
Towards a Unied International Movement
e existence of a common enemy helped the ICFTU to mobilise affiliates, but
simultaneously illustrated the significance of the division between itself and the other
confederations. e increasingly anomalous existence of Apartheid in South Africa
CON TE XTS
35
brought the ICFTU to develop a widely supported campaign. e Confederation
undoubtedly made a real contribution here, overcoming the many constraints limiting
its capacity for independent action (Gumbrell-McCormick, 2001). e circumstances
were quite specific, in that there was a considerable consensus among affiliates that
the Confederation should act (Gumbrell-McCormick, 2001). Roger Southall (1995)
has shown however that effective solidarity was still restricted because of Cold War
tensions between the ICFTU, the ITSs and the (non-dues paying) WFTU affiliate,
the South African Congress of Trade Unions.
As the multinationals grew in strength, and pushed at existing trade boundaries,
semi-official meetings were held between officials of the world’s divided trade union
movement (Lieβ, 1983). e extension of Western corporations into the Comecon
countries provided a motive for Western unionists to show increased interest
in Eastern Europe, while the emergence of ‘dissident unionism’ there ironically
provided a motive for official Soviet unions to shore up their role through contact
with their Western counterparts (Busch, 1983).
After 1989 and the collapse of Communism, the way was paved for a more unified
trade union movement at international level and extension of previously limited
attempts to develop international networks and collective bargaining. Huge areas of
the international economy were now opened up to companies and the ICFTU tried
to take the opportunity to expand its influence. A key conclusion of a 1990 ICFTU/
ITS Conference was that the ICFTU should strengthen their ‘coordination of the
work of the ITSs and national centres’ and a new department for multinationals was
established at the Confederation (ICFTU, 1990; Gumbrell-McCormick, 2000a: 514).
As this showed, the ICFTU did not accept a role limited to lobbying but wished to
expand its coordinating, organising and bargaining functions.
Unions in the former Soviet Union were allowed back into the fold of ‘free’ trade
unions, even if their qualifications for entry were highly questionable. In the words
of one commentator, the arrival of the ex-Soviet unions ‘unleashed a tremendous
struggle to remake the geography of workers’ representation in central and Eastern
Europe’ (Herod, 2001: 224). In the 1990s, even before these unions were admitted
to the ICFTU, many affiliated to GUFs. e GUFs were therefore able quickly to
come into direct contact where the ICFTU could not, and this was used to reject the
ICFTU’s hegemonic claims within the international movement. e irony was that
these unions’ ultimate admission to the ICFTU entailed only limited strengthening
of it, because the former Soviet Union affiliates of WFTU had no tradition of
negotiating with management. e main weapon used by the internationals has been
an expansion of the GUF’s educational activities aimed at improving unions’ capacity
to represent members (Sogge, 2004).
e loss of most Russian unions, and that of a significant number of others in
the world who left the WFTU without subsequently joining the ICFTU meant that
WFTU withered, and stopped publishing membership figures in the 1990s although
it continues to play some role in India, Latin America and the Arab countries. is
PAST AND PRESENT
36
left the ICFTU as by far the biggest international player, with the relatively tiny
Christian WCL the only alternative.
In November 2006, the ITUC was formed from the ICFTU, the WCL and a number
of sizeable and influential left-wing unions such as the Polish OPZZ, the Argentinean
CTA, the Colombian CUT and the French CGT. Since the WCL’s strength lay in the
developing and transitional countries, the international trade union movement
achieved better international coverage even though some WCL affiliates refused to
join. At the same time, the ITUC established a Pan-European Council including non-
ETUC unions and notably the Russians, who are not represented in the EU-oriented
ETUC (Traub-Merz and Eckl, 2007).
Politically divisive tendencies persist in some of the world’s unions, and the
largest issue is that of the state controlled unions in the All-China Federation of
Trade Unions (ACFTU), not currently recognised as free unions by the ITUC. e
ACFTU is linking up with African unions through its cooperation with and funding
of the Organisation of African Trade Unions and their financing of the sizeable
Nkrumah Labour College in Accra (Traub-Merz and Eckl, 2007). ere are voices
arguing for engagement with the ACFTU through the latter’s admission to the ITUC,
an issue that threatens to re-divide the international free trade union movement.
Conclusion
e international movement is now closer to being worthy of the global description
than ever before, and previous political and religious obstacles to unity in action that
restricted attempts to deal with multinationals have been removed.
Key structural issues have been evident throughout the movement’s history
and continue to loom large today. Perhaps the most important is the reluctance
of national unions to cede power to international organisations. Another is the
respective roles of the sectoral and umbrella bodies. e importance of educational
work as a central and in many respects unifying activity helping the internationals
establish shared activity of value to affiliates has been evident.
ose active in the international trade union movement continue to find positive
resources in their organisations’ history: its sheer length demonstrates the depth of
their experience. e internationals’ collective record of actively resisting fascism
and opposing Apartheid represent shared touchstones. While political differences
may have been at the centre of the international movement’s history, both sides now
refer to a shared tradition of campaigning against both.
e length of the organisations’ histories goes well beyond being a collective
resource because it encourages affiliates to take a long-term view of their involvement
and of the benefits to be gained from it, an idea we expand on in Chapter four.
CON TE XTS
II
The Work of
the Internationals
• CHAPTER FOUR •
The Internationals –
Governance and Resources
All international trade union organisations face three tasks: organisation, policy,
and democratisation. is means international trade union policy must be
democratised, it must reach deep down among the membership, including them,
involving them.
Dan Gallin, ex-general secretary of the IUF (quoted in Rütters, 2001: 1)
Introduction
Th i s chapter examines the central political dynamics within the internationals.
We begin with an analytical account of how they are governed, showing the
developed country unions’ dominance of the GUFs’ structures, underpinned
by their high financial contributions. We also explain the current resource difficulties
and the consequent political choice that the more financially secure affiliates are now
faced with.
We also argue that the two most commonly discussed strategies of merger and
de-regionalisation are unlikely to deal effectively either with the GUFs’ difficulties
or the underlying problem of national union decline. We therefore advocate two
measures. e first is an increased material contribution from more developed
countries. e second, for which we draw on international relations theories, is
to encourage regions and sub-regions to make a contribution themselves. We
suggest that they pursue a union development agenda organised on a small group
or ‘minilateral’ basis and seek funding to support it. We believe the latter measure
offers real possibilities for accessing funds, for improving the real involvement
of developing country unions in the internationals and for building the affiliated
unions themselves.
We begin with an overview of the internationals’ membership and explain how
they are governed and staffed. Next, the resources problem is examined. Finally, we
expand in detail on the two proposed measures for arresting and reversing recent
trends.
40
Global Governance: Structures and Authority
Shown in Map 2, the GUFs’ headquarters are all in Europe. Most executive and
statutory (i.e. required by rule) international meetings are hosted at headquarters.
Map 2: Locations of Internationals’ HQs
In 2004, the regional offices were distributed as shown in Map 3.
Map 3: Locations of Internationals’ Oces
THE WORK OF THE INTERNATIONALS
41
In addition many internationals have established technical support offices in
sub-regions and specific countries, mainly to manage particular programmes and
projects, shown in Map 4.
Map 4: Locations of Project Oces
e internationals, in common with other union organisations, have well-
developed governance systems and all maintain strict formal decision-making
procedures based on their rules or ‘statutes’. ese formal structures and procedures
constitute a framework providing some constraints on powerful groups. e first
democratising structure, also standard in national unions, is congress. Congress is
the highest decision-making body, and in most cases meets every four years. is
contrasts with almost all national unions where congresses are held more frequently.
Congresses host around two thousand delegates and provide opportunities for
unions to network and lobby for their agendas. Formal congress procedures are
also tightly administered by headquarters officials, restricting the possibility of
unanticipated decisions.
All internationals have dues payment categories reflecting ability to pay, with
most affiliates clustered in the lower paying ones. In an attempt to limit the voting
power of high-paying affiliates, voting rights are in most GUFs determined by
paying membership levels regardless of category of payment. e only exception
is the removal of voting rights from unions who have paid no affiliation fees. is
is a second democratising measure, that seeks to de-couple subscription from
participation but, significantly, voting is restricted to leadership elections and issues
where consensus cannot be reached. Congresses, by virtue of their infrequency and
the lack of decision-taking opportunities, therefore have very restricted possibilities
for determining or affecting strategy.
THE INTERNATIONALS GOVERNANCE AND RESOURCES
42
e internationals’ executives meet more frequently, usually annually, but in
some cases twice a year. Seats are allocated for regional committee members,
regional distribution and women since the internationals have all made concerted
efforts over at least the last decade to ensure statutory representation of women at
all levels. is is a third democratising measure. It has helped to broaden executive
meeting agendas and in some cases how debate is conducted.
Table 4 shows the distribution of executive positions by region in the ICFTU
between 1972 and 2003.
Table 4: Regional Distribution of Executive Positions in Relation to Membership in the ICFTU, 1972–2003
Region 1972 1983 1992 2003
Seats % Mbp % Seats % Mbp % Seats % Mbp % Seats % Mbp %
Africa 3 12 868 2 4 11 546 1 5 11 1,997 2 6 13 10,590 9
Asia 5 20 4295 11 6 17 11,047 14 8 18 19,628 20 11 23 27,282 24
West Asia 1 3 1800 2 1 2 800 1
Middle East 2 8 844 2 2 6 865 1 2 4 882 1 2 4 1,273 1
Latin
America
3 12 1552 4 4 11 12,608 16 5 11 10,812 11 6 13 16,467 15
Caribbean 1 4 122 - 1 3 311 - 1 2 149 - 1 2 382 1
Third World 14
56 7,681 20 18 51 27,177 34 22 50 34,268 35 26 55 55,994 50
Europe 8 32 27,805 72 10 29 35,902 45 14 32 46,872 48 15 32 43,637 39
North
America
2 8 1,300 3 6 17 14,902 19 6 14 14,990 15 6 13 12,362 11
Source: Gumbrell McCormick (2002) and ICFTU Congress Reports
e Table shows that in 2003 the developing country unions had a small majority
of executive seats in the ICFTU. However, this tells us little about their weight in
decision making both there and in GUFs. In reality, a consensus between the main
unions of the developed world, and especially those that contribute high amounts
financially (the Germans, Nordics, North Americans and Japanese) is likely to carry
any vote.
Formal authority runs in clear lines up to the general secretary and president.
General secretaries and presidents are elected officials, as opposed to the vast
THE WORK OF THE INTERNATIONALS
43
majority of those working for the internationals who are appointed functionaries.
General secretaries are currently all European. An increasing number of
presidents are from developing countries. The general secretary carries ultimate
responsibility for their organisations but this is to some extent shared with
presidents particularly at times of political conflict. The great majority of senior
officials are men, with only one female GUF general secretary, Anita Normark
of BWI.
Information is controlled and distributed by the senior officers and this group
therefore has significant power to set agendas (Lukes, 2002). Officers’ power in
this respect probably exceeds that of union officers at national level, because
of the linguistic barriers and wide range of difficult-to-interpret information
involved internationally. As Kratochwil argues, there is a ‘baffling’ array of
information requirements for players in a multilateral setting, and this is apparent
in the case of the internationals. He argues that for international organisations
to be able to achieve consensus and cooperation, ‘of paramount importance is
the interpretation of the “facts” and inferences about motivations’ (Kratochwil,
1993: 448). This complex process of interpretation is inevitably dominated by
permanent officials. They also play a significant role in working groups. Working
groups and non-statutory committees, formed regularly to review and develop
policy are the general secretary’s main partners in policy making.
Executive committees are formally responsible for running the organisation
between congresses. However, Kahler’s (1992) problem of ‘latency’ is evident in
these committees. ‘Latency’ describes the situation whereby members become
passive in large diverse groups. Delegates fall into diplomatic mode and rarely raise
contentious issues publicly, with the breaks and evenings providing important
social and political contact. Few delegates attend executive meetings in order
to help resolve difficult international issues. All delegates’ unions face their own
financial and political problems and delegates are reluctant to tackle the same
problems multiplied at international level. In addition, they are concerned to
maintain unity and there is therefore limited real participation at this level. us,
the financial difficulties that we analyse below are little discussed even within the
internationals’ executives and are certainly not publicised. As a result, a subject of
fundamental importance is not widely understood and is only discussed within a
highly restricted group, often in informal situations. is group largely consists of
officials together with the representatives of influential national unions, which is
largely coterminous with those making large financial contributions.
ere are three types of authority that unions can draw on in their dealings with
each other in these bodies: contribution authority, political authority and moral
authority. e first comes from the amount that a union is seen to contribute to
the collective both in financial and human terms and has primacy over other forms
of authority. Germany, USA, Canada, Japan and the Nordic region collectively
THE INTERNATIONALS GOVERNANCE AND RESOURCES
44
represent on average 80 per cent of the internationals’ dues income. High levels of
affiliation fees and external project funding coming from Western European and
North American unions means that the focus at executive level is on their interests,
and this is well understood by unions from elsewhere. Conversely, where a region has
been consistently unable to deliver appropriate affiliation fee payments, for example
Latin America in recent years, their credibility and influence is much diminished.
Political authority comes from the perceived political importance of an affiliate’s
country and its trade union movement. At the global policy level, this is closely
associated with contribution authority although the political positioning of an
affiliate at important political moments is also significant in the shorter term.
e third, more temporary form of authority is moral. Moral authority is acquired
when a union movement becomes prominent because of its exceptional achievements
or particularly adverse environment; recent examples are Colombia and Iraq. When
representatives from these countries speak they are not contradicted and in general
they are supported. But this does not confer any wider authority on them to influence
global strategy and therefore the authority is limited and transient.
Stang
Some 700 people globally work for GUFs, 380 at headquarters and 297 in regional
offices. is is a small number in comparison both with the ITUC and with major
non-governmental organisations: in 2007, for example, Oxfam had 6,000 employees
worldwide. is small staff must administer organisations which themselves
consume large amounts of time and energy, with high levels of reporting and written
accounting to executive bodies. e workforce’s capacity to meet these demands
seems likely to decline in the near future, as approximately 50 per cent of the
internationals’ existing staff will retire by 2013. Many of these staff have enormous
understanding of particular industry sectors and unmatched in-country experience
acquired over long periods, raising a serious question about the regeneration of
human resources within the internationals.
Archer (2001) suggests that the national composition of staff is an important
dimension for judging an organisation’s degree of internationalisation. In this
sense, different internationals represent variations on a theme. In some cases the
general secretary strongly affects the functionaries’ national make up; in others the
influence of powerful affiliates dominates while in a third group both influences
are combined. ere are therefore high proportions of South African, German,
American, Australian, Japanese and British staff.
Employment in the regions is often more precarious than at the headquarters
secretariats, weakening the formers’ overall position in relation to headquarters. In
some GUFs, a proportion of those working in the regions is employed on temporary
contracts, through externally funded projects. e number of staff employed by the
THE WORK OF THE INTERNATIONALS
45
internationals is provided in Table 5 below, with the minimum numbers employed
on temporary contracts given in brackets.
Table 5: Numbers of Sta Employed by the Internationals, 2004
Global
Union
Total
Number
of Head
Oce
Sta
Regional Sta Total
Number
of
Regional
Sta
Total
Number
of Union
Sta
Percent-
age of
Head
Oce
Sta
Africa Am ericas Asia
Pacic
Europe Mi ddle
East a nd
North
Africa
EI 33 12 8 9 4 33 66 50
ICFTU 84 12 (2) 17 (3) 19 8 (4) 2 58 (9) 142 (9) 59
IFBWW 14 8 (6) 5 (2) 14 (8) 1 (1) 1 (1) 29 (18) 43 (18) 33
ICEM 17 2 4 2 2 10 27 63
IFJ 12 (3) 2 (1) 3 (1) 3 (1) 3 11 (3) 23 (6) 52
IMF 22 3 5 9 (4) 2 19 (4) 41 (4) 54
ITGLWF 7 3 4 4 4 15 22 32
ITF 102 5 7 10 11 1 34 136 75
IUF 19 (2) 2 (1) 7 (2) 12 (8) 12 (2) 33 (13) 52 (15) 37
PSI 28 12 9 15 20 2 (2) 58 (2) 86 (2) 33
UNI 41 8 12 10 16 46 87 47
TUAC 9 (3) 9 (3) 50
Total 388 (8) 69 (10) 81 (8) 107 (21) 83 (7) 6 (3) 346 (49) 734 (57) Average 49
Note 1: The ‘Head Oce sta’ gures include secretariat sta not located in Head Oces. The gures in
brackets refer to the minimum numbers of sta employed on temporary contracts.
Note 2: The ICEM closed its regional oces and relocated the secretariat to Geneva during the period 2007–
2008.
Source: Schwass (2004)
Outside of the developed world, externally funded projects play a considerable
role in providing staff. Not all of the internationals provided current information for
this table, but it gives some indication of how many staff members are partly (more than
50 per cent) or wholly financed by project funds: for example, 8 (6) means that out of 8
staff, 6 are financed by project funds. e number of staff sponsored by project funds
is in reality higher than shown here since some GUFs operate numerous project offices
separate from the regional offices. e proportion of head office to regional staff in
the last column is calculated without taking project staff into consideration; European
THE INTERNATIONALS GOVERNANCE AND RESOURCES
46
regional organisations independent of GUFs have also been omitted (Schwass, 2004).
e governance of the internationals therefore places considerable power in
their European headquarters, whilst influence within them is concentrated in
affiliates with high contribution authority. Most affiliated unions fall outside of this
category.
Membership
e key task in the 1980s and 1990s was seen to be moving away from being based
in the developed world and towards becoming genuinely global organisations. ere
was therefore an intense drive to build affiliation levels in order to permit elections
to regional structures, and this proved highly effective. e internationals recruited
large numbers of unions, many of which became the recipients of resources from the
developed world’s unions. Despite this drive, the internationals’ regions today are
globally incomplete, since at this point few GUFs have established presences in the
Middle East and none have offered formal recognition to the Chinese unions.
Non-OECD unions’ motivations for affiliating have important consequences.
According to Logue (1980), strong national unions will only affiliate to international
bodies if they cannot solve their problems at national level; in the case of non-OECD
unions, the converse applied since many of the unions affiliating were not and had
never been strong. ey affiliated because they were weak. Some sought to substitute
for old alliances that had previously sustained them. African and Asian unions
involved in national liberation movements had seen an erosion of their previously
close relationships with the nationalists in power after independence and started to
experience pressures to subordinate themselves to states (Wood and Brewster, 2007).
Others saw affiliation as a step out of political and industrial isolation. For many
unions, joining the internationals was their first opportunity to build genuinely
global contacts on the basis of relative equality, as previously international contacts
had been with ex-colonising countries’ unions. ey were in addition often controlled
by national political élites. For other unions, such as those from the former Soviet
Union, affiliation was seen as a way of affirming their democratic legitimacy by
gaining admission to the free trade union movement. It also provided them with a
way of looking at other forms of unionism which they had not been able to access
before the 1990s, without committing themselves to adopting any of them.
ese motivations sustained unions through affiliation processes which they
experienced as difficult and involved them in divulging organisational information
that they would have preferred not to submit. In the case of the ITUC, affiliation
was also a protracted process as it maintained a now-abandoned policy of limiting
affiliations to one per country, and in many countries competing union structures
and political affiliations made selection processes lengthy. ese processes raised
expectations of what could be delivered after affiliation, and in many cases the
THE WORK OF THE INTERNATIONALS
47
demands overwhelmed the internationals. e real possibilities of providing help
were dwarfed by the expectations of unions whose only previous experiences of
international organisations were of large bodies such as the United Nations or well-
resourced NGOs.
Some unions, such as those based in South Africa, were relatively self-sufficient,
but these were a small minority. Most new affiliates posed major difficulties, and
foremost among them were those from the former Soviet Union. Since the 1990s,
these unions have put significant pressure on the GUFs to help them become
more effective organisations. Most of these vast unions, with formal memberships
numbering millions, were completely unknown to the internationals, since they had
previously been excluded from the ITUC ‘family’. ey are heterogeneous and virtually
impossible accurately to map (Garver et al., 2007). Whilst making demands on the
internationals, they maintain their old affiliations. e VKP, the CIS regional structure
dating from Soviet times, continues to operate and to provide an alternative locus of
activity, and, along with WFTU, in the 1990s opposed national union affiliation to the
Western ‘anti-communist’ internationals. In 2000 the Russian FNPR affiliated to the
ICFTU. However, its President, Mikhail Shmakov, currently sits as the President of VKP,
highlighting the Russian unions’ decision to live in both worlds. e GUFs were aware
of the Russian stance and unions were usually admitted to GUFs without any serious
pressure being put on them to reform prior to admission. ese unions therefore posed
real challenges when they came into the internationals as full members.
e Chinese unions, whose formal membership is in excess of the rest of the
world put together, represent a further responsibility for the internationals. Most
GUFs conduct ‘active engagement’, which entails forming diplomatic and in some
cases technical relations without discussing affiliation. In this case, they receive no
income for their work.
e recently affiliated unions are the main beneficiaries of the transfer of resources
that occurs within the internationals, and developed country unions have to justify
that transfer to their own members. In the next chapters we look at two of the most
significant areas of activity for European and North American unions: collective
bargaining and networking across multinationals. Here is an important positive
argument for their contributions, because international bargaining and networking
are easily identifiable products. National networking between affiliates of the same
GUF is a further benefit. Less-apparent benefits also exist, including being able to call
on the internationals’ experience and linking capacities. It is often assumed that it is
only the developing country membership which either needs this level of support or
can demand it from other affiliates. Yet many cases exist of OECD country unions
benefiting from international support during disputes. One recent example is that of
the powerful Finnish Paper Workers’ Union which in 2005 received extensive support
from many unions including the Brazilian paper workers in its successful battle to
resist employers’ attempts to increase the use of contract labour.
THE INTERNATIONALS GOVERNANCE AND RESOURCES
48
In summary, the internationals have faced increased demands from their affiliates
outside of the developed world for which they receive little income, and although
identifiable benefits exist for OECD-based affiliates, this has caused them to examine
their commitment more closely.
Headquarters–Regions Relations
ere is clearly a balance to be struck between the requirement to tailor policies and
practices to specific conditions on the one hand and the need to ensure coherence in
global policies and activities on the other.
e issue is strongly affected by broader political attitudes. Sentiment in favour
of increased regional autonomy has solid underpinnings, both in Europe and in
the developing world, where unions have long been suspicious of the ‘imperialist’
foundations of the global unions. is is especially apparent in radical unions in
Latin America who see the Western European and North American domination of
the international structures as reflecting the policies of their national governments,
and as part of an imperialist policy. ese broad sentiments are shared by many
other unions in the developing world.
Gumbrell-McCormick, in her study of the ICFTU, approaches the centre–region
balance issue through the concept of federalism, defined as ‘individuals gathering
together through national groups to act in common with other national groups’
(2001: 20). Strong and weak federalism are distinguished, depending on the level of
power delegated by national unions to the internationals. In the ICFTU, federalism
is relatively strong because regions are virtually autonomous. Regional structures
within GUFs have varying degrees of autonomy but federalism is weak in the
majority because regions are essentially subordinated to the headquarters. Most
are effectively outposts of the international and are, unlike the ITUC’s regions, not
regarded as essentially autonomous organisations.
Regional executive committees generally meet twice a year and regional
conferences are held, in the main, every four years, putting considerable power in
the hands of regional officials. Regional secretaries head regional offices, and they
are usually appointed functionaries of the international. In these cases the GUF
exercises control through its regional secretary. In a minority of cases (the ITUC,
UNI and IUF) the equivalent officer is elected, with the title of regional general
secretary. In simple terms the distinction is between a regional secretary, whose job
is to represent the interests of the international within the region, and a regional
general secretary or elected regional president, whose task is to represent the
interests of the region to the international executive.
Regional autonomy is also limited because, for the majority of GUFs, budgetary
and financial issues are ultimately regulated exclusively at headquarters level. In
recent years, internal and external auditors have begun to focus on the regions’
THE WORK OF THE INTERNATIONALS
49
financial practices, bringing criticism of the management of project funds and
standards of accountability more widely. ey also refer to the precarious position
of regional offices and structures, and in particular the common problem of the
non-registration and lack of legal standing of regional offices and structures with
national authorities.
Regions are further weakened in relation to headquarters by the distribution of
authority within the regions themselves, since they are not homogenous blocs of
countries with shared interests. Within each region, with the exception of Western
Europe, clear national centres of influence exist. In Africa, South African unions
dominate, providing up to 80 per cent of GUFs’ regional income. ey are a much
admired union movement that emerged through struggle, an evolution not replicated
by unions in other African nations. ey therefore combine a high degree of all three
of the types of authority identified above. e South African unions are, on the other
hand, self-conscious in their dominance of political processes, a self-consciousness
that is not evident in the cases of Japan in Asia and the USA in the Americas. In Asia,
Japanese unions exert strong influence on the basis of high contribution authority.
In Latin America, despite the fragmentation of the organisations themselves, the
Brazilian unions do likewise through political authority. Where structures cover the
Americas, the North American unions essentially control them through a combination
of contribution and political authority. In Eastern Europe, Russian unions are highly
influential, also through contribution and political authority. In Western Europe,
power relations between countries are more balanced. e Nordic unions are well
interconnected and tend towards common positions that increase their influence
within the European and international structures. ey, along with the Germans, in
most cases the highest dues payers to international bodies, are also the main funders
of international projects and that contribution authority, although not always decisive,
gives their views heavy weighting in GUFs.
As implied above, a different centre–periphery model exists in the ITUC and
some GUFs, closer to a strong federalist arrangement where regional structures
enjoy high levels of autonomy. e most extreme example is the ITUC, which has
the powerful European TUC and three autonomous regional organisations (Africa,
Asia and Latin America).
However, analysis using the federalist concept only takes us so far. It focuses on
centre–affiliate relations and therefore does not help greatly in addressing the issue
of imbalances of influence within and between regions. e imbalances issue is
important because it limits many unions’ influence, involvement and commitment.
e concept of multilateralism, which focuses on coordinated relations beyond
those of the centre and affiliates, is useful here. e GUFs are multilateral bodies;
their multilateralism contains federalism. In other words, multilateralism forms an
outer frame for federalism. Ruggie defines multilateralism as it applies to norms,
régimes and organisations as follows:
THE INTERNATIONALS GOVERNANCE AND RESOURCES
50
Multilateralism is an institutional form that coordinates relations among three
or more states on the basis of generalized principles of conduct; that is, principles
which specify appropriate conduct for a class of actions, without regard to the
particularist interests of the parties or the strategic exigencies that may exist in
any specific occurrence.
(Ruggie, 1993: 77)
Axelrod and Keohane’s (1986) idea of ‘diffuse reciprocity’, where membership of a
multilateral organisation is expected to yield a rough equivalence of benefits between
members in the aggregate and over time, usefully deepens Ruggie’s multilateralism
concept. e multilateralism and diffuse reciprocity of GUF membership contrasts
with the bilateralism and short-lived nature of an increasing amount of international
union work. Bilateralism is both particularist and linked to a particular situation
such as a campaign; it is normally a short-term relationship based on specific
reciprocity. Diffuse reciprocity on the other hand is longer term, in that affiliates do
not expect short-term payoffs from their membership.
Ruggie (1993) argues that multilateral structures are sustainable because the
generalised organising principles on which they are based are more elastic than
those of bilateral relationships. is elasticity means that multilaterals are able to
contain internal tensions, especially when their work is in demand. e theory helps
explain the GUFs’ immense adaptability, and even their survival in a context of
extreme resource pressures.
Multilateralism, as we suggested above, provides a flexible outer frame for federal
arrangements and for groupings of different sorts. ese internal small groups, with the
right incentives, are able to work towards creating collective goods. As Olson says:
If the central or federated organization provides some service to the small
constituent organizations, they may be induced to use their social incentives
to get the individuals belonging to each small group to contribute toward the
achievement of the collective goals of the whole group.
(Olson, 1965: 62)
In short, multilateralist bodies like the GUFs can contain smaller or ‘minilateral’
(Kahler, 1992) groupings that can strengthen them. is is positive both because of
the problem of ‘latency’ and due to the power imbalances within GUFs and their
regions. We return to this later, since it has a bearing on the resource issue which
we now outline.
The Resource Issue
Developed country unions are experiencing a steady decline in the number of workers
paying subscriptions. Table 6 shows how this is reflected in the ICFTU through the
THE WORK OF THE INTERNATIONALS
51
declining numbers of members that national unions actually pay subscriptions for
in relation to their declared membership.
In 2001 the ICFTU claimed 147 million members (the WCL estimated its
membership at 4.3 million at that time). ese figures are only broadly indicative,
since they include over 50 per cent of unions implausibly declaring exactly the
same membership figures for each year over a five- or six-year period (ICFTU,
2001b).
Falling membership in the majority of unions has a direct and dramatic effect on
the internationals’ dues income, a key source of funding. Only one per cent of union
membership dues worldwide is dedicated to international action and affiliation.
e most recent calculation of the funds available to the internationals, carried
out as part of the ITUC’s Millennium Review in 2001, estimated a total income of
US$60 million per year from membership dues, donated funds and development
cooperation funds raised externally. Between 1999 and 2003, an additional US$70
million of donations and project funds was channelled through ITUC regional
structures. To put these figures in comparative perspective, Oxfam received some
US$580 million in 2007, while the British union Unite claimed an income in the
same year equivalent to about US$400 million.
Table 6: ICFTU Declared and Paying Membership by Region, 1998 and 2003
Region 1998 2003
Declar ed
Membership
Paying
Membership
Declar ed
Membership
Paying
Membership
Western Europe 43,214,250 37,594,584 43,637,707 36,233,803
Asia and Pacic 27,907,407 18,112,000 27,282,638 14,708,392
Latin America 19,361,761 19,254,000 16,467,678 7,439,380
North America 14,612,112 14,612,112 12,362,956 12,362,056
Africa 8,941,858 8,454,000 10,590,676 10,254,425
Central and Eastern Europe/
N.I.S.
8,235,265 8,048,000 37,296,378 11,300,583
Middle East 747,800 745,000 1,273,528 1,271,000
West Indies 420,332 424,122 382,798 387,000
Totals 123,440,785 107,243,818 149,294,359 93,956,639
Percentage of membership for
which dues paid
87 63
Source: ICFTU (2004) and authors’ calculations
THE INTERNATIONALS GOVERNANCE AND RESOURCES
52
e 2001 analysis noted that real value fee receipts per member had dropped
by 22 per cent since 1994 (ICFTU, 2001a). Table 7 shows the actual fees received
from its affiliates in 1998 and 2003. Between 1999 and 2003 the ICFTU increased
its membership by 28 million but saw a fall in paying membership of 12.4 per cent.
In addition, the internationals all face a serious challenge from the late payment of
membership fees.
Table 7: ICFTU Actual Fees Received per Region, 1998 and 2003
Region Actual Fe es Received,
1998 (EURO)
Actual Fees
Received, 2003 (EURO)
Percentage Change
(+ or -)
Central and Eastern
Europe/N.I.S.
115,884 194,870 +68.2
West Indies 3,030 4,351 +43.6
Western Europe 5,403,298 5,862,541 +8.5
North America 2,215,906 1,647,439 -25.7
Africa 131,899 67,675 -48.7
Asia and Pacic 1,467,920 490,412 -66.6
Latin America 29,744 4,259 -85.7
Middle East 37,890 5,155 -86.4
Source: ICFTU (2004)
National unions practise trade-offs between affiliation fees and the number
of members they choose to affiliate: if the international increases fees, they
simply reduce the number of members affiliated. The internationals’ resources
are therefore strictly limited by the amounts that national unions are prepared to
contribute, conceived of in essentially historic terms. In 2004–5, the ICEM tried
to address the problem directly in an explicit but unsuccessful attempt to raise
international affiliation fees higher on the political agenda of OECD country
unions. Annual accounts revealed that a 2003 affiliation fee increase, designed to
bring a 14.29 per cent increase in income brought only a 1.2 per cent increase in
2004 (ICEM, 2004a; ICEM, 2004b). Here was explicit confirmation of the GUFs’
previous experience, that raising affiliation fee levels simply leads to a reduction
in claimed membership by affiliates. The ICEM discussed two alternative
responses. Initially, it considered presenting the case for affiliates to devote
an increased percentage of their national income to international work. After
enormous and at times acrimonious debate amongst affiliates at international
and regional levels, this proposal was rejected as unrealistic. Affiliates were
THE WORK OF THE INTERNATIONALS
53
unable to secure sufficient political support within their own organisations to
defend an increase in affiliation fee levels. The only remaining option was to
reduce expenditure and to close regional offices. The ICEM’s regions have from
then on been assisted by the secretariat.
Project funding is also essential income, used to sustain educational activities that,
as we outline in Chapter seven, are considerable. In total, project funding represented
just under half of the internationals’ total income in 2000 (ICFTU, 2001f). Increasingly,
the internationals blur the line between project activity and the resource people
employed to manage them on the one hand, and their core costs and staff on the
other. Schwass (2004: 22) refers to this blurring in diplomatic terms: ‘the term “direct
project costs” is somewhat difficult to define’. It is therefore impossible precisely to
estimate the balance between membership dues and project funding, a particular
issue in the cases of the ITGLWF, BWI and ITUC. e area is sensitive since it is clear
that a sizeable proportion of the internationals’ funds come from outside the trade
union movement. is fundamental reality, which has gone un-noticed or at least un-
mentioned by other authors, is a major issue. It clearly means that the internationals
are dependent on external funders and risk becoming essentially project-driven
organisations as happened to the IFPAAW prior to its forced merger with the IUF
in 1994. ere is a need for the international trade union movement to become less
dependent on these sources.
Nevertheless, the internationals’ ability to continue to raise significant project
funds currently remains crucial. Potential exists here to develop the role of GUF
regions, since donors have increasingly decentralised arrangements, with funding
decisions often being made at regional and sub-regional levels. ose GUFs with
a relatively strong federalism may therefore have a potential route out of financial
problems, especially when combined with a minilateral approach where several
countries’ unions collaborate. GUF regions operating within a strong federalist
model, such as the IUF’s East European region, have already been able to use their
independence to raise considerable project funds.
Financial problems have intensified debate over the appropriate level of regional
autonomy. In this debate, the case advanced by headquarters for improved regional
accountability cannot be dismissed as simply a device for headquarters to increase
their specific weight. In the ITUC’s 2004 Congress documents, the financial auditors
complained of a lack of consistent financial reporting from AFRO (ITUC, 2004).
Gottfurcht had done the same in 1966, indicating that this is a long-term issue and
not one invented opportunistically.
us, the financial problem means that the internationals rely heavily on external
funding to support key areas of activity. An answer may lie in more rather than
less regional autonomy, but regional accountability both upwards and downwards
remains an issue. ese, however, are not the terms in which the internationals’
future is normally discussed.
THE INTERNATIONALS GOVERNANCE AND RESOURCES
54
Re-structuring the Internationals
e most recent major attempt to generate discussion around restructuring, the
ITUC’s Millennium Review, failed seriously to involve GUF executives and brought
only minor results disproportionate to the scale of the problems.
Within the internationals, discussion of organisational strategy focuses
almost entirely on a merger of the main GUFs. One GUF, the ITGLWF, clearly
has inadequate resources to carry out the range of tasks required of any global
union body, and merger offers a way out which it intends to take. For other
GUFs, pushing the merger trend to its logical conclusion is not a solution that
will be widely acceptable; some, like the IUF, have set policies firmly against
merger. A common suggestion (see for example Traub-Merz and Eckl, 2007)
is to establish two large GUFs, one for manufacturing and one for the public
sector. However, the current prospects of the GUFs agreeing to merger on this
scale are tiny. There are several understandable reasons for this. First, GUF
merger has invariably meant that one headquarters has to be chosen, bringing
the loss of uniquely experienced staff. Second, some international trade unionists
refer to the national level experience of merger which has often entailed long
periods of internal disruption. There is some support from serious research for
that viewpoint (Dempsey, 2004), and it was long ago suggested that mergers
fail to overcome the problems that create them (Chaison, 1996). It seems that
although no research exists on GUF mergers, these problems are likely only
to be magnified at international level. Third, it is pointed out that many of the
claimed benefits of GUF merger centre on cost reductions that are not assured
or quantified, and that could be obtained in other ways.
In 2006, in direct response to the weakness of the solutions under discussion, the
Council of Global Unions was formed to intensify coordination and cooperation. Yet
this appears to have attracted little support from several GUFs, with the IUF and
IMF deciding not to participate. e objection is that it is, in the words of one official,
‘a complete waste of scarce resources’. Currently, neither merger nor the Council of
Global Unions offer viable solutions to the current resource problems.
Prior to discussing a proposed solution, we note that the internationals stand
to benefit from a management review encompassing all of them, similar to those
that have been carried out by some trade union movements at national level (for a
review and comparison of these in Canada, the USA and Britain, see Clark et al.,
1998). At a minimum, this seems likely at least to make useful suggestions as to how
efficiency could be improved both individually and collectively. Some of the issues to
be covered, such as succession planning for the high proportion of staff due to retire
over the next decade, are especially urgent.
THE WORK OF THE INTERNATIONALS
55
Small Groups: Collaboration and Minilateralism
In the current situation, a further strategic review seems unlikely to attract sufficient
support from the GUFs to be viable; the Millennium Review may be read as
an illustration of the intractability of the structural issues. We now outline an
alternative approach.
Both research and experience indicate that small groups are able to work more
effectively together and deliver improvements to the internationals’ work even with
reduced income. We therefore suggest a move away from a merger/restructuring
focus and towards increased inter- and intra-GUF collaboration.
Intra-GUF collaboration can be enhanced by small groups of unions working
closely together on concrete issues, offering the prospect of overcoming Kahler’s
problem of ‘latency’. Small groups create environments where individuals and
individual organisations are more likely to form robust relationships. ey find it
easier to define their own individual and collective interests and to navigate the
process of forming alliances and working with other organisations. When small
groups are comprised of geographically, politically or industrially connected unions
there is potential for them to operate effectively together in symbiotic ways.
ere are two ways in which small groups can make international groupings
more effective, as described by Kahler (1992); in one, the group acts as a ‘broker’
(sometimes described in practice as ‘missionaries’) for negotiations within the wider
grouping. In the other, the small group operates as a ‘progressive club’ in which it
develops and promotes more progressive policies or work than the ‘lowest common
denominator’ normally experienced in larger groups. is model offers global unions
a way of developing meaningful and ambitious collaboration between affiliates.
A strategic approach to inter-GUF collaboration could also be usefully developed
by substantially expanding a number of existing collaborations. Educational
collaboration offers good prospects here. One positive example has been the ten
years of GUF cooperation in the former Soviet Union across various educational
programmes. A second is the work of UNI, IUF and PSI on the shared concern of
private equity. e joint initiative started in 2007 and includes research and online
information, with potential for joint campaigning. A third joint initiative relates to
contract labour, initiated by the ICEM but being extended to include all GUFs and
the ITUC. e programme has developed research and strategic discussion about
how unions manage the issue in different sectors. An important element has been
to spread awareness amongst unions that the growth of the use of contract labour
or the ‘externalisation’ of work is a major threat to labour standards at local and
international levels. is collaboration could involve an important campaigning
(including around multinational labour agencies) and lobbying element, to relate
to the current wider discussion around international labour standards. Collective
bargaining provides a fourth case. e joint signing of IFAs is important for
strengthening IFA credibility with stakeholders. ree currently exist and it appears
THE INTERNATIONALS GOVERNANCE AND RESOURCES
56
likely that more will follow. Finally, significant collaboration exists between the
internationals in the Middle East and North Africa, and China. e needs of both
areas far outweigh the resources available, underlining the need to pool resources.
ese collaborations offer global unions a focused and decentralised way of
forming stronger international structures, and could provide a more ambitious and
realistic way out of the current impasse.
Conclusion
e internationals have been victims of their own success in recruiting affiliates,
but the influence of the latter remains limited. is is important background to the
shortcomings in using international agreements and building company networks
that we identify in the following chapters.
Resources have been a resilient, long-term problem. In a ‘big picture’ sense, the
resources issue would have been recognisable to Gottfurcht in the 1960s and even to
Fimmen in the post-First World War years. e reluctance of unions at national level
to cede increased resources to the internationals is a long-term one that can only be
addressed by a combination of the objective logic of globalisation and the political
will to take the necessary steps in response.
e immediate resource issue that the internationals face can only be dealt with
by developed country affiliates because it is urgent. Survival rests on this small group
of unions making the political choice to devote a higher percentage of their income
towards international structures than they have historically done. A strategy to
convince their own executive bodies to do this when their own membership income
is in decline is needed and one of this book’s objectives is to provide material for such
intelligent appeals to members.
ere is a second, longer-term prong to our proposed strategy. We propose
a minilateral approach within the existing multilateral structures. We suggest
pursuing the union developmental agenda through educational activity supported
by fundraising, by building sub-regional and small group programmes both between
unions and the internationals themselves. Funding is increasingly decentralised
and offers real opportunities for such groups. e inter-union collaboration should
mobilise the demonstrated democratising effects of educational activity discussed
in Chapter seven. Participation can be raised, and this can combine with increased
contribution authority, providing an opportunity for developing country unions to
increase their influence in the internationals.
THE WORK OF THE INTERNATIONALS
• CHAPTER FIVE •
International Collective
Bargaining
Two leaders of the union Edegel in Peru’s electricity sector, organising workers in
the Endesa group attended the ICEM project’s education, which led to a number
of achievements. eir improved bargaining skills directly brought better salaries
and conditions of work. It helped establish a Contract Workers’ Union in the
company. Membership increased, so did links with the community and a library
was set up for members. e International Framework Agreement with Endesa
was used to improve health and safety standards, and this also included extension
of the same standards to contract workers.
Cristhian Rivas, ICEM Project Coordinator Peru
Introduction
Th i s chapter deals with the main tools currently used by GUFs to improve
unions’ ability to bargain and organise within multinationals: International
Framework Agreements (IFAs).
A good deal of attention has been focussed on these agreements both within the
internationals and by academics interested in the development of an international
system of industrial relations (for example, ICFTU, 2001b; Wills, 2004; Müller
and Rüb, 2005). ey have been adopted as a major part of the industrial GUFs’
strategies; UNI, IMF, ICEM, BWI, IUF and ITGLWF have all passed congress and
executive resolutions to this effect. Essentially statements of fundamental rights,
these agreements offer some possibilities for local unionists by establishing a context
for unions to develop local bargaining with employers.
Our argument is as follows: current ways of working do not maximise IFAs’
potential. Many agreements are negotiated without the involvement of unionists
from developing country unions, who are not made fully aware of the agreements’
purpose, ramifications and implications. Indeed, in some cases the GUFs, as the
representatives of these unions, are themselves only marginally and formally involved
58
in concluding them. Trade unions from outside of the developed world are often
little involved in IFA monitoring and review processes. In these circumstances the
agreements frequently do not enable developing country unions to conduct dialogue
with companies. ere is therefore a need to review how they are negotiated,
promoted, monitored and reviewed.
Negotiating International Framework Agreements
International Framework Agreements are often concluded between unions and
GUFs on the one hand and senior management on the other. We reproduce the
building workers’ model framework agreement in Annex 1 and an actual agreement
with the French company Lafarge in Annex 2. ese agreements may be seen as an
attempt to establish stable relationships with companies on an international basis
and they are favoured by European unions over the more adversarial and episodic
US strategic campaigning approach, which identifies and attacks companies’ key
relationships (Russo, 1999; Greven, 2003; 2006; 2008).
IFAs may also be viewed as alternatives or supplements to unilateral company
codes of conduct as, unlike these codes, they are negotiated and normally
feature key union rights (Holdcroft, 2006). In some sectors, such as clothing
and textiles, thousands of unilateral codes remain in existence and are likely to
remain the predominant tool available to GUFs to exert leverage on companies
because of union weakness. Table 8 below provides those details which we have
been able to establish of the IFAs in existence in mid 2008.
THE WORK OF THE INTERNATIONALS
Table 8: International Framework Agreements, Mid-2008
Company Employees Headquar ters
Country
Industry GUF Year
Con-
cluded
Signed
by HQ
Country
Union
Danone 76,000 (2007) France Food Processing IUF 1988 No
Accor 170,000 (2006) France Hotels IUF 1995 No
IKEA 118,000 (2007) Sweden Furniture BWI 1998 No
Statoil 29,500 (2007) Norway Oil ICEM 1998 Yes
Faber-Castell 5,500 (2002) Germany Oce Material BWI 1999 Yes
Metro 208,600 (2006) Germany Commerce UNI 1999
Freudenberg 32,000 (2004) Germany Chemicals ICEM 2000 Yes
Hochtief 46,800 (2006) Germany Construction BWI 2000 Yes
Carrefour 456,200 (2006) France Retail UNI 2001 No
Chiquita 24,000 (2007) USA Agriculture IUF 2001 No
59INTERNATIONAL COLLECTIVE BARGAINING
Table 8: International Framework Agreements, Mid-2008
Company Employees Headquar ters
Country
Industry GUF Year
Con-
cluded
Signed
by HQ
Country
Union
Danone 76,000 (2007) France Food Processing IUF 1988 No
Accor 170,000 (2006) France Hotels IUF 1995 No
IKEA 118,000 (2007) Sweden Furniture BWI 1998 No
Statoil 29,500 (2007) Norway Oil ICEM 1998 Yes
Faber-Castell 5,500 (2002) Germany Oce Material BWI 1999 Yes
Metro 208,600 (2006) Germany Commerce UNI 1999
Freudenberg 32,000 (2004) Germany Chemicals ICEM 2000 Yes
Hochtief 46,800 (2006) Germany Construction BWI 2000 Yes
Carrefour 456,200 (2006) France Retail UNI 2001 No
Chiquita 24,000 (2007) USA Agriculture IUF 2001 No
Company Employees Headquar ters
Country
Industry GUF Year
Con-
cluded
Signed
by HQ
Country
Union
OTE Telecom Data not
available
Greece Telecommunications UNI 2001 Yes
Skanska 56,000 (2006) Sweden Construction BWI 2001 No
Telefonica 248,400 (2007) Spain Telecommunications UNI 2001 Yes
AngloGold 64,000 (2005) South Africa Mining ICEM 2002 Yes
Ballast Nedam 3,700 (2006) Netherlands Construction BWI 2002 Yes
DaimlerChr ysler 272,300 (2007) Germany Auto Industry IMF 2002 No
Endesa 27,200 (2005) Spain Power Industr y ICEM 2002 Yes
ENI 75,800 (2007) Italy Energy ICEM 2002 Yes
Fonterra Data not
available
New Zealand Dair y Industry IUF 2002 Yes
Merloni 17,300 (2005) Italy Metal Industry IMF 2002 Yes
Norske Skog 8,000 (2006) Norway Paper ICEM 2002 Yes
Volkswagen 328,600 (2006) Germany Auto Industry IMF 2002 No
GEA 19,200 (2006) Germany Engineering IMF 2003 No
ISS 391,400 (2004) Denmark Building Cleaning UNI 2003 Yes
Leoni 34,000 (2006) Germany Electrical/Automotive IMF 2003 No
Rheinmetall 19,100 (2007) Germany Defence/Electronics IMF 2003 No
SKF 38,700 (2003) Sweden Ball Bearing IMF 2003 No
Bosch Data not
available
Germany Automotive/
Electronics
IMF 2004 No
H&M 40,300 (2006) Sweden Retail UNI 2004 Yes
Lukoil 148,600 (2006) Russia Energy ICEM 2004 Yes
Prym Data not
available
Germany Metal manufacturing IMF 2004 No
Renault 128,900 (2006) France Auto Industry IMF 2004 Yes
Röchling Data not
available
Germany Engineering IMF 2004 No
SCA 50,400 (2007) Sweden Paper Industr y ICEM 2004 Yes
Arcelor 320,000 (2006) Luxembourg Metals IMF 2005 No
BMW 107,500 (2007) Germany Auto IMF 2005 No
EADS 116,800 (2006) Netherlands Defence IMF 2005 No
EDF 156,500 (2006) France Energy ICEM &
PSI
2005 Yes
60 THE WORK OF THE INTERNATIONALS
Company Employees Headquar ters
Country
Industry GUF Year
Con-
cluded
Signed
by HQ
Country
Union
Falck 11,300 (2004) Denmark Graphical UNI 2005
Impregilo 10,100 (2005) Italy Construc tion BWI 2005 Yes
Lafarge 71,000 (2006) France Construction BWI &
ICEM
2005 No
Rhodia 17,000 (2006) France Chemicals ICEM 2005 Yes
Stabilo Data not
available
Germany Cosmetics/
Instruments
BWI 2005 Yes
Veidekke 6,300 (2006) Norway Construction BWI 2005 Yes
Euradius Data not
available
Netherlands Graphical UNI 2006 Yes
Nampak Data not
available
South Africa Graphical UNI 2006 No
Portugal
Telecom
32,300 (2005) Portugal Telecoms UNI 2006 Yes
PSA Peugeot
Citroen
211,700 (2006) France Auto IMF 2006 Yes
Royal BAM 30,300 (2006) Netherlands Construction BWI 2006 No
Securitas 215,000 (2006) Sweden Property Services UNI 2006 Yes
Staedtler Data not
available
Germany Writing and Drafting BWI 2006 Yes
France Telecom 187,300 (2007) France Telecoms UNI 2007 Yes
Inditex 47,000 Spain Textiles ITGLWF 2007 No
NAG Data not
available
Australia Finance UNI 2007 Yes
Quebecor 43,000 (2006) Canada Graphical UNI 2007 Yes
RAG 93,600 (2004) Germany Mining ICEM 2007 Yes
VolkerWessels 16,600 (2004) Netherlands Construction BWI 2007 No
Waz Group Not Known Germany Media/journalism IFJ 2007 No
Brunel 6,100 (2006) Netherlands Recruitment & and
Services
IMF 2008 No
UMICORE 10,500 (2006) Belgium Metals ICEM &
IMF
2008 Yes
Vallourec 17,200 (2005) France Metals IMF 2008 Yes
Source: IFAs taken from GUF websites, employee gures taken from Hoovers.com
61
IFAs originated in the late 1980s, but have developed significant momentum in
the twenty-first century. ey are arguably an historic breakthrough since earlier
attempts at international collective bargaining in the 1960s and 1970s essentially
failed (Bendiner, 1987; Rehfeldt, 1993). One reason for their emergence is that
subsequent long-running attempts since the early 1970s by the ITUC and GUFs to
win a social clause in international trade agreements had met with little success
over the following quarter of a century. e ITUC, while claiming some success
in dealings with the World Bank, acknowledged the difficulties and limitations of
discussions with the international institutions (ITUC, 2006).
GUFs therefore decided at the turn of the century to try to use the Core Labour
Standards that had been recently agreed by the ILO. It was thought best initially
to target ‘softer’ European companies with requests for them to publicly accept
these standards and adopt them as their own. It was seen as important to obtain
a sufficient number of agreements to build momentum and to encourage more
reluctant companies to start negotiations – and this proved successful. IFAs often
contain statements of the ILO’s Core Labour Standards, some form of review and
complaints process, a communication/monitoring mechanism (generally an annual
meeting between the signatories) and provision for review and re-negotiation. In
2000 just nine signed agreements existed but by 2004 there were thirty-two, and by
mid-2008 sixty-one, mainly in the metalworking, chemical and energy, building and
wood, and services sectors (cf. Schömann et al., 2008).
e current context is, however, not conducive to strong agreements at international
level. Rehfeldt’s (1993) argument in relation to the earlier international collective
bargaining attempts – i.e. that they were undermined because no adequate legal
framework existed for them – remains valid. Nor are current power relations conducive
to negotiated compromises weighted towards workers’ interests. Management are not
responding to sustained pressure from workers throughout companies when they
conclude IFAs (orpe and Mather, 2005). Company motives for reaching them are
little studied, but IFAs’ titles reveal a CSR agenda. For those who look no further (for
example, unions outside of those involved in negotiating them) they may appear from
these headings as nothing more than company CSR statements. ere is a clear risk for
the GUFs of being used by companies simply as accomplices in their PR efforts.
It has been argued that companies signing these agreements wish to influence
stock market views of their company, develop their corporate cultures internationally,
improve conflict resolution and to extend existing cooperative relations with
headquarters unions (Schömann et al., 2008). e first IFA was signed by the IUF
with Danone, a company that sees itself as a ‘social business’, a self-image it continues
to develop. In this case, the image appears to have some substance. Bruno Vannoni
of the IUF was quoted in 2003 as saying: ‘We have a real dialogue with the company
and they appear to be much more interested than many other farm-produce
multinationals in listening to the concerns of employees’ (Blyth, 2003: 2). Danone’s
INTERNATIONAL COLLECTIVE BARGAINING
62
family-friendly brand image as a food company also gives it sizeable exposure to the
risk of costly brand damage. e majority of its workforce is employed outside of
France and it is therefore exposed to the risk that its labour practices may contain
pockets of poor practice.
e process of forming a relationship with management leading to an agreement
is not uniform. Headquarters unions and related European Works Councils generally
play an important role, but agreements are also initiated directly by GUFs (Hammer,
2005). GUFs are the only representatives of unions from outside Europe involved in
negotiating IFAs and have attempted to define their role in relation to headquarters
unions in concluding them. e International Metalworkers’ Federation report on
IFAs summarises the principles of negotiation required by that GUF. ese include:
reference to the ILO Core Labour Standards, universal coverage across all company
operations and the importance of home country unions’ and works councils’
involvement in the negotiation process. e emphasis is therefore on the role of the
headquarters union and works councils, reflecting the especially strong influence of
powerful national unions in the engineering industry and therefore in that GUF.
e metalworkers are a specific case where workplace organisation is strong and
unions are especially reluctant to delegate negotiations to the GUF. Consequently, the
IMF has had little role in negotiating many of these agreements, but has often been used
to sign them after they have been agreed. us, for example, the Röchling ‘Principles
of social responsibility’ are signed by the company chairperson and his counterpart
from the European Works Council (Ernst Gräber, also chair of the German Works
Council), while two representatives of the European metalworkers and one of the IMF
are described as ‘entering into the agreement at the time of its signing’. Similarly, the
Rheinmetall ‘Principles of social responsibility’ are signed by the chairperson of the
European Works Council, Erik Merks, also chair of a Rheinmetall Works Council and in
2002 a member of the company’s supervisory board. is agreement is signed by Merks,
and also by representatives of the European metalworkers and the IMF, both of whom
are described as ‘joining the agreement at the time of signing’ [sic]. In terms of the right
to freedom of association, both agreements’ texts are rather ambivalent, and refer to
works council forms of representation as a legitimate alternative to trade unionism. In
these cases, it appears that the chairpersons of the European Works Councils are also
prominent in their German companies. e general impression is that the influence of
the German headquarters union has been more significant than that of the GUF.
Other GUFs have equivalent well-organised unions within them and also
experience a similar if less sharply posed issue of the balance between the global
union and powerful affiliates. ere are often practical reasons making it difficult
for unions from developing countries to be involved in negotiations. us, without
real GUF involvement, there is no voice in the negotiation process for unions from
outside Europe. is increases the need to make these unions fully aware of the
rationale for the agreement and how they might use it.
THE WORK OF THE INTERNATIONALS
63
What occurs in the period after an agreement has been signed has a great bearing
on whether it is used by local unions. Agreements have to be translated into all
the relevant languages and sent to local management and unions. However, even
if this is carried out effectively, the local representatives’ level of understanding of
the agreement’s purpose is unlikely to be high if they simply receive a copy of the
IFA without further explanation or discussion regarding the thinking behind it.
Even the full meaning and import of specific terms can be an issue. For example,
the term ‘freedom of association’ may not be immediately clear to many workers.
orough reporting back to extra-European unions on the purpose and course of
the negotiations is clearly required.
e evidence of these agreements being used to good effect in practice is not
especially strong. Although the texts are often available on GUFs’ websites, examples
of their practical use are not prominent either there or in their publications. We
surveyed selected GUF websites and publications for a six-month period, searching
for such references; the results are presented in Table 9.
Table 9: References to International Framework Agreements in Selected GUF Publications
Global Union Total Number of Items Total Number of References
to IFAs
BWI 115 1
IMF 55 10
IUF 47 0
UNI 81 3
Sources: Global Union online Newsletters & Bulletins July–December 2007
e nature and purpose of IFAs could play a significant part in union educational
programmes. Yet, mainly concerned with their relationships with well-organised and
large European headquarters unions, GUFs currently promote them in a way that
contributes little to educating or building their other affiliates’ capacities. In reality,
GUFs and headquarters unions substitute for the weakness of many affiliates in
relation to multinationals by negotiating and signing international agreements that
leave local power relationships and dynamics intact.
International Collective Bargaining: Scope and Content
Hammer (2005) distinguishes between two types of IFAs, dividing them into ‘rights’
and ‘bargaining’ agreements, with the first covering union rights and the second
dealing with substantive issues. In some cases they include clauses on bargaining
INTERNATIONAL COLLECTIVE BARGAINING
64
subjects such as health and safety and HIV/AIDS. However, the second category’s
title is potentially misleading: it should not be understood as substantive bargaining
on central distributive issues, since this is not included in IFAs.
e only GUF which negotiates substantively on key distributive issues is the
International Transport Workers’ Federation. e ITF bargains for seafarers with
groups of ship managers and employers centred on the International Maritime
Employers’ Committee, with whom it reaches collective agreements through the
International Bargaining Forum. ese managers and employers have been forced
to react collectively to union power in a way that other employers currently are
not (Anner et al., 2006). e ITF’s long-term Flags of Convenience (FoC) campaign
underpins this bargaining by establishing and enforcing conditions of employment
through mobilising the combined industrial strength of seafarers, dockers and
transport workers. Ships docking in well-unionised ports may be subject to industrial
pressure from these groups of workers, and agreements are backed up by an
international system of ITF inspectors in ports worldwide. e ITF’s agreements
with employers are distinctive in that they reflect a serious and prolonged industrial
campaign, but also in three further ways. First, they have required that affiliates
at least share bargaining with the GUF. Second, these agreements cover wages.
ird, they are policed by a co-ordinated ITF inspectors’ network, supported by
regular educational activities allowing them to meet, develop contacts and exchange
experience.
Koch-Baumgarten has cogently argued that there were three circumstances that
brought this unique situation about. Firstly, the FOC nations were located in the
developing world and were at the time of the campaign’s origins essentially union-
free, allowing the transfer of collective bargaining responsibilities from national
level to the ITF. Secondly, the unions in labour-exporting countries were not to
be influential in ITF decision-taking processes for some time to come, allowing
the capital-exporting countries to enforce and consolidate the system. Finally,
port union controls could be used to discipline potential conflict, both between
unions and between unions and the FOC employers. e ITF was gradually able to
build the commitment of unions from all countries to the campaign (Lillie, 2004).
Nevertheless, the campaign arose, as Koch-Baumgarten shows, from a very specific
set of historical circumstances unlikely to be replicated.
It is anticipated within the internationals that IFAs can also be extended to
sectoral employers’ associations where these exist at international level. Sectoral
agreements are clearly easier, and cheaper, for GUFs to make than agreements with
large numbers of individual employers. Whether employers who are tending to move
away from national level employers’ associations will be inclined to move towards
them at international level is, however, unclear (Croucher et al., 2006).
As outlined above, IFAs normally include the eight ILO Core Labour
Conventions: the freedoms of association and collective bargaining (87 and 98),
THE WORK OF THE INTERNATIONALS
65
against discrimination (100 and 111), forced labour (29, 105) and child labour (138,
182). An important right contained in the Danone agreement but absent from
many others is that contained in C.135, ‘rights of workers’ representatives in the
undertaking’. Other labour standards could in theory be included, such as those
enshrining the right to strike, security of employment, access to decision makers and
those regarding migrant workers. However, the conventions mentioned are generally
restricted to the eight stated above. An ILO survey of those agreements signed before
the end of July 2003 showed that 20 per cent did not even include Conventions 87
and 98, while mentions of other conventions were even fewer (ILO, 2003). Some,
such as the Volkswagen agreement, make only indirect reference to the Core Labour
Standards.
e IUF has developed a way of dealing with the current weak focus on union
recognition in the agreements, designed to educate both affiliates and companies
more fully on their purpose. It has signed a number of national and international
Labour Recognition Agreements with multinationals, whose limited but clear aim
is to secure union organising and bargaining rights. ese agreements emphasise
arguably the most important rights covered by an IFA and, because of their relatively
sharp focus, may be a more effective way of helping unions build their organising and
bargaining capacity. Increasingly, GUFs are trying at review meetings with companies
to formulate and agree clearer and more specific language in IFAs, particularly on
the right to organise. e IUF’s move towards highlighting the organising and
bargaining rights issue is clearly a departure of fundamental importance for the
whole international union movement. It brings the vital question of local union
rights much more clearly into focus.
Hammer (2005) suggests that one effect of IFAs is to extend company level
agreements up supply chains to suppliers. In general, however, multinationals resist
strong clauses mentioning suppliers. In fact, in some agreements such clauses do
not exist (Schömann et al., 2008). With few exceptions, when these clauses appear,
they simply specify that companies should ‘inform’ and ‘encourage’ their immediate
suppliers, ignoring the extended supply chain, and there is no hint of sanctions if
they do not conform (Schömann et al., 2008). e Lafarge agreement reproduced
in Annex 2 says ‘Lafarge will seek to use the services of those trading partners,
subcontractors and suppliers which observe the principles agreed’. e Prym–IMF–
European Works Council agreement simply ‘encourages and supports their business
partners to consider this declaration in their own respective company policy [sic]’.
Even the proposed clauses in the IMF model agreement are not strong: ‘X company
supports and encourages its suppliers to take into account these principles in their
own corporate policy.’
e IMF obviously regards a more stringent model clause as unrealistic. e
Lukoil agreement arguably has a stronger but essentially similar version of this type
of clause:
INTERNATIONAL COLLECTIVE BARGAINING
66
e Agreement covers all activities and operations where Lukoil has direct
control. Where Lukoil does not have overall control it will exercise its best efforts
in order to secure compliance with the standards and principles set out in the
Agreement. Lukoil will notify its contractors, licensees and major suppliers of the
existence of the Agreement and encourage them to comply with the standards
and principles contained within it.
Lukoil–ICEM–ROGWU Agreement 2004
e absence or weak wording of these clauses is significant in the context of
widespread externalisation and the fact that the great majority of workers are not
directly employed by multinationals. is weakness primarily reflects company
resistance to including more substantive terms and conditions.
Implementing and Managing Agreements
e implementation and management of these agreements is a critical area. Local
management, like some local unions, are often neither aware of, nor committed to,
an agreement signed by senior management in Western Europe. Unions can remedy
this situation by reporting problems through agreements’ review processes. Local
company management can be surprised to learn that these processes exist. In Asia
and Latin America, national union federations are weak and incapable of providing
much assistance, so management in local operations generally do not anticipate that
unions can muster any level of technical or political support. However, the actual
incidence of this sort of reporting does not appear to be high.
ere is little evidence that local unions have exploited these agreements. e
BWI (2004) evaluation suggested that ‘currently only a handful of unions are active
in using the framework agreements and many are unaware of their purpose or even
of their existence’. Vic orpe and Celia Mather, highly experienced international
trade unionists reporting on the ITGLWF’s project designed to conclude IFAs, wrote
that ‘Many affiliates interviewed had no clear idea of the nature or purpose of an
International Framework Agreement’ (2005: 7). It is worth noting that this ignorance
was despite the project’s specific efforts to inform them. orpe and Mather went on
to recommend a more ‘up from below’ approach to generate more support (orpe
and Mather, 2005: 7–8). Such an ‘up from below’ approach could include involving
affiliates more fully in implementation and review processes than at present.
ere are currently two approaches to monitoring both IFAs and unilateral
company codes. A model promoted by BWI and ITGLWF is of direct GUF supervision
and systematic monitoring of suppliers. BWI argues that establishing monitoring
groups as part of an IFA’s terms is an important tool for monitoring and building
the agreements, particularly in companies with long sub-contracting and supply
chains. e best-documented example comes from the favourable Scandinavian
context. e BWI–IKEA agreement established an IKEA Monitoring Group, made
THE WORK OF THE INTERNATIONALS
67
up of BWI, IKEA and Swedish trade union representatives aimed at developing
good industrial relations. Joint missions were carried out by the Monitoring Group
in response to complaints from Slovakia, Hungary, Malaysia, Romania, Poland,
ailand, Laos and China. IKEA then set up a Compliance and Monitoring Group
to manage IKEA’s own code for suppliers. According to the company, this structure
carried out training for 80 IKEA auditors and it is claimed that between 2000 and
2003 twenty thousand corrective actions were carried out as a result of audits. e
model is essentially one of joint policing from headquarters, thereby at one level
overcoming the issue of weak and uneven union representation in many of the
company’s workplaces outside of Sweden. It satisfies the company’s requirement for
reduction of labour-related CSR risk and clearly brings benefits to workers. e clear
danger for the global union, however, is that the process plays too small a role in
building trade unionism outside of the headquarter country.
e second model, used by IUF, UNI, IMF and ICEM, is more collaborative
(Fichter and Sydow, 2002) and designed to build affiliates’ capacity to monitor and
use complaints and review mechanisms. is model is closely tied to the formation
of company networks that potentially facilitate complaints being raised. Recently,
a method of monitoring has been agreed at Peugeot–Citroen that envisages more
decentralised processes. e agreement will be monitored by ‘social observatories’ to
be established at local level involving management and unions according to terms of
reference to be agreed by the local parties. e involvement of local unions provides
a direct voice for them that would otherwise be absent, and they are clearly more
involved in this case than in most. Such an arrangement promotes confidence that
local representatives will understand the agreement’s content and how it should be
applied.
To offer real possibilities for unions outside of Europe to organise, IFAs need to
clearly state practical, concrete and specific rights at the workplace. at is, they
must be capable of being used by local unions and not simply vague statements by
companies of general responsibilities. In this respect, the IUF approach of making
them recognition agreements has a good deal to offer.
Conclusion
What impact might IFAs have on building local capacity to bargain and organise?
It is important to answer this question within a global perspective, since only a tiny
minority of the world’s workers are employed in these companies. is is unlikely
to change rapidly, and if the internationals cannot organise workers well beyond
multinationals their legitimacy as representatives of global labour is likely to be
threatened.
Although IFAs set frameworks, the way this is done means that their impact may
always be minimal. Limits exist for further developing agreements through review
INTERNATIONAL COLLECTIVE BARGAINING
68
processes if the current balance of forces between local unionists and managements
in the developing world – where the latter possess an overwhelming advantage
– remains or, as seems more likely, worsens. e building workers’ evaluation of
these agreements reached a similar conclusion:
ere is an urgent need for more and better involvement of affiliated trade
unions and for them to take greater responsibilities. is will require a training
programme to assist unions to take up the challenge of recruiting and organising
in those companies.
(BWI, 2004)
It seems more important to help trade unionists to operate both technically and
politically within multinationals than to attempt to create agreements they cannot
use. As Ingeborg Wick concludes in relation to her research on IFAs and unilateral
codes of practice, there is a need to strengthen union capacities to take advantage of
them, ‘particularly in the developing world’ (Wick, 2004: 127). is can be seen as
part of the wider process of explaining and promoting international régimes that was
identified many years ago as important to any such régime’s diffusion and survival
(Olson, 1965). Developing networks of trade unionists at both company and regional
levels can potentially play a part in this, and this is the subject of our next chapter.
THE WORK OF THE INTERNATIONALS
• C H A P T E R S I X •
Networks
Introduction
In t e r n at i o n a l networks of trade unionists are clearly useful for unions
attempting to make IFAs into meaningful organising tools. Moreover, because
they help to build unions’ engagement with other unions internationally, they are
key to delivering international solidarity action.
Defining ‘networks’ is problematic as the term is used by GUFs in multiple
and often confusing ways – sometimes to describe ad hoc groupings, sometimes
committees and even to describe a GUF (Union Network International). By ‘network’
here we mean stable groups of union representatives from different units of a
multinational company or sector who are in communication with each other. A
degree of stability and permanence is required for the description to be meaningful,
as in many cases networks have been formally established but have no continuing
existence (Greven, 2006). Finally, networks should be identifiable as such within the
trade unions and membership should be possible. In practice, networks take quite
different forms, with differing levels of involvement of works councils, headquarters
and non-headquarters unions, management and GUFs. From a union viewpoint,
networks’ aims vary and may develop across time, but they are generally set up
initially to collect and exchange information with the aim of progressing towards
organising, coordination and solidarity action.
Company networks are of strategic significance to GUFs (Garver et al., 2007).
e IMF World Auto Council identified both IFAs and ‘timely, accurate and
accessible information’ through networks as central, related tasks for the IMF in
2004 (IMF, 2004). e BWI evaluation of IFAs similarly suggested that to succeed,
they would require ‘substantially improved communication and global networking’
(BWI, 2004).
e central argument of this chapter is that the networks in existence are in these
terms problematic. Staggeringly, given their strategic importance and the substantial
GUF resources dedicated to them, there are no examples of truly global company
networks. ere are no networks with global scope that relate directly to existing
International Framework Agreements. is is largely because of pockets of non-
unionism, non-affiliation by some unions and because many companies take pains
70
to keep agreements and networks apart. However, important methodological and
procedural problems also hamper network development.
To be described as successful, a network should deliver demonstrable benefits
to workers. In this chapter, five key factors are identified that underlie successful
networks: how they are formed, company attitudes and influence, resources, the
network’s ability to facilitate participation of diverse memberships, and the spatial
basis of that membership. Existing company networks show that self-interest and a
potential increase in bargaining power with employers are insufficient to generate
the high level of engagement required to achieve success. e networks that we
examine which function at higher levels exhibit ‘significant commonality’ (Olmsted,
1959: 21) and encourage a depth of engagement that goes beyond the instrumental.
e network members are aware of having something significant in common; that
is, a commitment to international trade unionism.
e chapter concludes with the suggestion that the best way to develop sufficient
commitment from network members is to build engagement by working in small
groups, or ‘minilaterally’ as defined in Chapter three, using participatory educational
tools.
A Functioning Regional Network
at networks have great potential for unions is exemplified by the ICEM’s Caspian
Energy Network, formally established in 2005 in a region and sector of major
strategic importance to the GUF. e Caspian Sea region, with the world’s third
largest oil and gas reserves behind the Middle East and Russia is likely to become
a major energy exporter over the next decade. Currently, these countries are
relatively minor producers due to specific political, economic and technical factors.
Major multinational oil and gas companies operate in Azerbaijan, the centre
of oil production in the region, through a consortium. BP, Chevron, ENI-Agip
and Lukoil are involved and the Norwegian oil company Statoil is a small but
significant consortium member. e Azeri state oil company Socar is a major
player in exploration and development, directly employing around seventy thousand
people. Numerous new pipeline projects have been proposed. Some are under
construction, the most significant being the Caspian Pipeline Consortium Project,
the Baku–Tiblisi–Ceyhan oil pipeline and the South Caucasus natural gas pipeline
Baku–Tiblisi–Ersurum. ese and other projects involve countries outside the
Caspian region, notably Turkey, Georgia, Iran and the countries of Central Asia.
e oil unions in the former Soviet Union were until the early twenty-first
century entirely enclosed in bureaucratic relations with their state employers, with
no experience of or, in many cases, interest in organising workers in the growing
number of private companies. Long-term contact between the leaderships of the
Norwegian, Russian and Azeri unions led to discussion of forging a strategic alliance
THE WORK OF THE INTERNATIONALS
71
and opened the Azeri union to wider perspectives. ese unions represented the
most significant groups of union membership and concentrations of available
resources, particularly in relation to access to company management. For more
than five years the unions, in partnership with the ICEM, engaged in educational
work and associated relationship building, developing strong communication links
between future network members. us, the group’s evolution allowed time for
educational processes to occur.
At the initial network meeting, union participation was as broad as possible, given
that there were no contacts in Iran and Turkmenistan and only weak links with Kazak
ICEM affiliates. e meeting was held on the basis that participants would be free to
set up the kind of network they thought would be effective. Group participation was
high, allowing unions to set group goals highly congruent with individual interests
and to form an informed, realistic view of what could be achieved. Active learning
methods were used, and focussed aims established through in-depth discussion about
the network’s purpose. ese aims included the identification of business and trade
union partners willing to enter into dialogue, and the development of negotiation
skills in union representatives. Significantly, the network also decided on immediate
tasks, including research, negotiation and organising activities. e process allowed
the core group of Azeri, Russian and Norwegian unions to persuade less-engaged
members to increase their commitment. Both the strategic and immediate targets
were concrete and achievable but group aims were set to the highest, rather than
the lowest, common denominator. e network agreed collectively to attend an
international oil sector conference taking place in Baku the following year in order
to find possible company targets and present the network publicly.
During the visit to Baku the network directly assisted the Azeri Oil and Gas
Workers’ Union (OGWU), which until this point exclusively organised permanent
workers in the state oil company Socar, to organise private sector employees. e
union had only limited experience of organising and none of managing strike action.
In November 2005 two thousand workers employed by Socar, BP and the American-
based contractor McDermott, supported by OGWU, went on strike for union
recognition, medical care, improved pay and contracts. e Caspian Energy Network
members, all senior leaders in their own countries, assisted OGWU’s President,
Jahangir Aliyev, to manage the negotiations and to carry out a recruitment campaign
to organise private sector workers. e network used the national media to pressure
the employers’ consortium, highlighting the issues involved and announcing the
presence of union leaderships from across the region, supported internationally by
the ICEM.
OGWU organised 5,000 private sector workers during this campaign. Shortly
afterwards, 1,600 workers employed at the offshore BosShelf site, a French–Azeri
construction project partially owned by Bouygues, joined OGWU following a strike.
Union negotiations brought improvements for workers. Several of the companies
NE T WO RK S
72
now recognise Azerbaijan’s national celebratory days and official holidays. ese
strikes proved to be historic breakthroughs in the Baku area, because a wave
of similar actions followed. At the time of writing, workers in another fourteen
companies have been engaged in industrial action also bringing improvements
to contract workers’ terms and conditions. Most recently, in June 2008 OGWU
negotiated increases of more than 100 per cent in minimum salaries and obtained
health and safety improvements for over one thousand contract workers at Caspian
Shipyards.
e network was therefore able to perform a high level of ‘locomotion’ (Olmsted,
1959: 113), or mobilisation, based on the high level of cohesiveness built within
the primary group. is cohesiveness was, in turn, based on the high capacity of
network members to communicate, developed through the educational approach
to relationship building. e wave of organising and negotiating successes in Baku
galvanised the network, providing a precedent for organising in the private sector
that showed results which members in other countries promoted in their own
unions. Several other unions in the network are now moving beyond their enclosed
state oil company horizons to organise more widely.
Company and Sectoral Networks
e Caspian Energy Network contextualises our analysis of company and sectoral
networks because many are less evidently successful in delivering benefits to
workers. ere is in fact little reliable information about the numbers and workings
of the networks supported by different GUFs, reflecting the latters’ nervousness
that a gap exists between theory and practice in this area. e number of genuine
networks operating in each GUF is likely to be in single figures.
In what follows, the five key factors in developing networks mentioned above are
highlighted and illustrated from the limited evidence available.
e first factor to consider is how networks are formed. e Caspian Energy
Network was created after a long process of relationship building. e core unions
at the network’s centre had brought their relations to the point at which they were
already strongly committed to the idea of a regional network before the founding
meeting. At the meeting, network aims were developed from the bottom up and
attracted the broadest possible participation. is contrasts sharply with the normal
process whereby a GUF or union raises money for a meeting, and then invites
unions to join a ‘global network’. ere are normally short preparation periods
for these meetings and the scope of the proposed organisation is already set from
outside. In addition, relationships are generally too weak to build commitment
and a focus on practical issues is lacking. Expectations are raised beyond what is
achievable, particularly in view of the actual resources available, which are seen
as almost exclusively the GUF’s responsibility to acquire. e network is then in
THE WORK OF THE INTERNATIONALS
73
practice frequently reduced to a small ‘global steering committee’ with little wider
involvement.
Although the few existing accounts pay little attention to them, company
attitudes and influence are another key factor. Since resources are a major issue, in
almost all cases management plays a role in providing the conditions for networks to
exist. Frequently, network meetings divide their time between union-only pre- and
post-meetings, as well as joint meetings with management. Management structures
often conceptualise them as ‘employee consultative councils’, similar to national
level or European Works Councils but without the same legal basis. Companies are
anxious, as Schömann et al. (2008: 46) point out, to avoid trade union organisations
‘becoming real negotiating partners on working conditions’ at international level.
us, for example, Unilever expressed its preference for company-based forms of
representation such as works councils over trade unions to Schömann and her
colleagues. In common with many management structures, they prefer to avoid
the ‘outside influence’ of unions, and to build close relationships with in-company
representatives. However, these can be too close. e Volkswagen World Works
Council (VWWC) appears to have the strongest structure and most cooperative
relationship with management. But it has also become clear that the nature of the
relationships between company and works council in the national level German
codetermination bodies that form the basis for the VWWC went well beyond
cooperation. eir corruption amounted to a major public scandal that still threatens
to discredit the entire system of codetermination in Germany.
As we remarked above, a disjuncture exists between IFAs and company networks.
In the cases of the signed IFAs listed in Table 9 in Chapter five there appear to be
only a few functioning regional and no global networks corresponding to them. e
explanation, it has been suggested to us, is simple: managements do not wish the
two to coexist and, given their role in allowing paid time off and funding travel and
accommodation for those who attend, they often have the power to make sure that
they do not.
A common theme of the limited discussion that has taken place on this subject
by others is that structural and process difficulties may be overcome, but only if
more resources become available (Müller and Rüb, 2005; Miller, 2004). at is,
the cost of running networks poses a serious challenge to already stretched union
finances. A ‘global network’ meeting costs between thirty thousand and seventy-
five thousand Euros and approximately three quarters of the network’s potential
membership is likely to lack the resources to pay for their participation. Since global
networks are seen as the responsibility of the coordinating GUF, it is assumed that
they must either raise project funding from donors or from companies themselves.
A second possible resourcing strategy is for the headquarters union to carry the
main burden of administration and activity costs. is inevitably tends to further
increase the weight of that union within the network. Networking underlines
NE T WO RK S
74
the resource crisis facing the internationals. Either unions at national level will
have to commit more resources to international work, or networking will remain
inadequate to the tasks.
e fourth factor to consider is the network’s ability to facilitate the participation
of diverse memberships. is is affected by the complexity of communication within
international networks (Miller et al., 2000). Communication at international level is
difficult, for both practical and political reasons. In many countries, and probably
the majority, union activists have only limited English or second language capacity.
In most developing countries activist access to computers is extremely limited and
telecommunications are often unreliable for providing timely responses to other
network members’ messages. Even when the practicalities of communication are
somehow managed, most activists from the developing world are entering an entirely
unfamiliar forum in a ‘global’ network. At network meetings members must explicitly
state their own interests, understand those of other unions and critically assess the
network’s potential. is all has to be done within a relatively short period of two to
three days, often with little pre-meeting information or previous contact with other
network members. Groups of diverse and often inexperienced participants find it
difficult to successfully navigate such situations.
Levels of union organisation in multinationals are uneven. is can limit the
scope of network membership, with totally unorganised sites and others with low
density coexisting with well organised ones. ese disparities create a situation of
unequal weight and influence between units which has to be managed to ensure that
genuine collaboration becomes possible. e more truly international the network
is, the greater are the socio-economic differences that must be confronted. As
discussed in previous chapters, considerable differences exist between the politics
and approaches of unions from different traditions, to the extent that cohesion can
become almost impossible to achieve.
None of this is to deny that interests can be aggregated, but the difficulties in
developing full participation are considerable. Clearly, the internal dynamics of the
network count, in particular whether the network helps members from developing
regions genuinely to participate.
e problems are graphically illustrated through the example of an international
network within the US tyre manufacturer Goodyear. e United Steel Workers of
America (USWA) funded the initiation of the Goodyear Global Union Network in
March 1999, at an event attended by over one hundred trade unionists from sixteen
countries. In 2006 the USWA started the Goodyear Newsletter, during a strike
against Goodyear in the US and Canada, called ‘Global Solidarity’. By the account
provided by a representative of the ai workers involved, the network later proved
incapable of defending a victimised activist.
In 2005 Anan Pol-ung, President of the ai Goodyear union PCFT was sacked
for trying to negotiate improved benefits and permanent contracts for twenty-five
THE WORK OF THE INTERNATIONALS
75
contract workers on annual contracts. In October 2005 all of these workers were
sacked, and all direct employment of contract workers by Goodyear was terminated.
Goodyear then used external labour agencies to employ workers in these functions.
Anan was simultaneously reinstated, although at a lower grade.
e ai Industrial Relations Court ruled for the reinstatement of the contract
workers in April 2006. When the remaining sixteen workers (two had died in the
intervening period) appeared at the factory for work in May 2006, management
refused them entry. In August 2006 Anan was sacked for a second time for failing to
attend a meeting because he had to attend to his comatose mother in hospital.
e ICEM was contacted by the ai union PCFT requesting solidarity support.
e ICEM ensured that the dispute was understood and recorded, and contacted
the United Steelworkers of America. e GUF built a high-profile information and
solidarity campaign, as this represented one of the first attempts by a small local
union to organise and bargain for contract workers, a priority issue. After repeated
requests, the United Steel Workers of America agreed to invite Anan Pol-ung to
discuss the case during the two-day Global Goodyear Unions’ Network Meeting
in Akron, Ohio, USA 19–20 March 2007. e meeting was attended by ICEM
representatives and its most powerful affiliates, including the South African NUM
and the German IG BCE. Despite this representation, when Anan’s case was raised in
the meeting with management, the Goodyear HR representative was allowed simply
to comment that he tried not to be involved in matters outside the US and that he
would refer the case to the manager in charge of ailand. e outcome is regarded
by the ai workers as a network failure, particularly since they had managed to
overcome major barriers in bringing the case to international attention. Despite
heavy backing by the GUF, the ai activists did not obtain even moral support from
the network, including from the developed country trade unionists present.
International company networks are too frequently dominated by headquarters
unions, leaving no space for weaker and smaller unions to genuinely participate in
network development and work. Several longstanding networks have made little
or no progress in addressing this major problem. e Daimler–Chrysler World
Employee Committee, formed after the merger between the two companies as an
extension of German works council arrangements, provides an example. Some
unions outside of the key Europe–North America company axis are not involved,
while the IMF has only an advisory role. In the view of both of these unions and
the IMF, the network pays too little attention to the need to construct and aid
organisation in the developing world.
A second example is that of the Nestlé network, whose development is shown in
Table 10. is network’s origins are tied up with significant international action, in
which the right of a Peruvian union to operate was successfully defended, via the IUF
and a New Zealand affiliate (Rütters, 2001). is initial impetus was important to all
concerned, but, predictably, proved hard to maintain.
NE T WO RK S
76
Table 10: The Nestlé Network
Phase Objec tives Participants Activities Funding
1972–1979 Networking &
information exchange,
planning/feasibility
Global 2 IUF conferences,
informal contact with
Nestlé management
IUF/Aliates’ own
expense
1980s Networking &
information exchange
EU, North America 2 regional
networking events
Aliates’ own
expense, Nestlé
European Council
1993–1999 Development of 3
regional networks,
global networking and
information exchange,
establishment of
network objectives
Africa, Latin America,
Asia-Pacic
1 global & 3 regional
meetings,
Manila Declaration
LO Norway
2002–2004 Coordinated
information exchange,
networking and
campaigning
Africa, Latin America,
Eastern Europe, Asia-
Pacic
4 regional & 1 global
meeting
FES, NGG, IUF
2004–2007 Coordination of
information and
networking in 4 regions
Africa, Latin America,
Eastern Europe, Asia-
Pacic
4 half-time
coordinators
FES
Source: Levinson (1972) and Rüb (2004)
e IUF report on the Nestlé network (Rüb, 2004), as it has functioned more
recently, raises structural and process issues about the way that internal dialogue
is conducted. Agendas and procedural matters are used to deal formally with issues
that are of interest mainly to headquarters unions, and there are too few possibilities
for delegates to address problems outside of this framework.
e key to successful aggregation of interests between representatives of
workplaces with different interests from unions of very different types and of
facilitating the necessary learning process is, Hoffmann (2005) suggested, a discursive
and transparent way of operating that acknowledges differences of interests and tries
openly to find common ground. is underlines the relevance of using educational
methods, which assist networks in developing open and participative approaches, as
Erne (2006; 2008) has shown. Doug Miller, an experienced worker educator with the
ITGLWF, provides guidance on appropriate processes (Miller, 2004). His sensitive
analysis is especially useful precisely because it derives from a sector with relatively
weak union organisation, which tends to magnify the problems associated with
network building. e methods Miller advocates are: a multi-level research effort
by unions on the company, awareness raising to build networks, a flexible approach
THE WORK OF THE INTERNATIONALS
77
by the GUF, and coordinated campaigns with other interested organisations such
as NGOs (an approach that is especially relevant to the weakly organised ITGLWF).
us part of his prescription is similar to ours since he advocates an inclusive,
flexible approach facilitated by strong research and two-way educational processes
broadly defined.
The fifth and final factor that influences network functionality is the
spatial basis for membership. The network operating in the German chemical
multinational BASF illustrates the point, because there is no central dialogue,
but rather a set of regional networks established over a period of around ten
years. This is a highly devolved structure, sustained by a combination of external
project funding from the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung and company finance, and
built on a regional basis with involvement from the ICEM. It is viewed within the
GUF as relatively successful since regional dialogue with management has been
secured in Latin America and Asia. Coordinated bargaining within each region
has been achieved, albeit to different extents. The right to organise has also been
won in practice, most notably in some Latin American workplaces. Definite gains
have therefore been made, although how much this has been brought about by
the network is harder to ascertain. The BASF example indicates the significance
of the degree of devolution of the networks’ structures and power relations. It is
an example of the benefits of working within smaller groups, in this case with a
smaller geographic scope. The problem of language is to some degree alleviated
by working within sub-regional or regional groups. Although this will have a
limited effect in the Asia region, it impacts much more in Latin America and the
former Soviet Union.
We summarise our interpretations of the five networks discussed above in Table
11 below. We note the limited level of solidarity action, mobilisation and bargaining
success that the networks have managed to achieve, despite many years of activity.
All of the networks discussed claim some success, but their achievements, although
real, are so far limited to a few documented instances. Some limited space has been
created for trade unionists outside of the developed world. e Daimler–Chrysler
network succeeded in successfully raising the right of Turkish workers at the
Ditas plant to organise, and has dealt with other complaints raised through its
consultative structure with management. In Nestlé, the network’s origins were
linked to successful international solidarity action. Later, it was able to provide moral
support to an important strike at a plant in Korea, with the union consolidating its
position and membership through public action and the network in turn gaining
impetus through that.
e most substantial, if uneven, bargaining successes appear to have been
achieved by the BASF regional networks. e regional Caspian Sea network has also
delivered considerable gains to workers.
NE T WO RK S
78
Table 11: Interpretive Summary of Five Networks
Company/
Sector
Initiator Motives Achievements Disadvantages
Caspian Energy
Project
ICEM
NOPEF
ROGWU
OGWU
Build bargaining &
organising capacity in
the Caspian
Organising private
sector workers
Establishing regional
network
Requires high level of
GUF and union sta
resources
No real capacity to
include organisations
from Turkmenistan
and Iran
Goodyear USWA Establish global
information and
campaigning network
to support national
negotiations
Information exchange No capacity for direct
solidarit y action
Nestlé IUF Inability to secure
dialogue with Nestlé
management
Information exchange
Solidarit y
mechanism
High-prole IUF
activity
No dialogue at
national, regional or
international levels
Unsustainable
nancially
DaimlerChr ysler IG Metall
German Works
Council
Secure information
and coordination
between key plants
Ensure IG Metall
control of international
dialogue
Resolution of several
disputes
No real IMF role
No real developing
country inuence
Weak agreement with
company
Unable to sustain
commitment of unions
globally
BASF IG BCE
ICEM
GWC
Establish regional
social dialogue outside
Western Europe
Regional dialogue in
Latin America and Asia
Networking contacts in
Eastern Europe
No IFA
No global dialogue;
failure to engage
North American
management and
unions
THE WORK OF THE INTERNATIONALS
79
Conclusion
e conclusions here mesh with arguments made elsewhere in the book that working
within small groups and with an educational focus offers an immediately viable way
of networking. Five key factors have been identified as important to networking
success: how networks are formed, company attitudes and influence, resources, the
potential for participation and the spatial basis of membership. In terms of how
networks are formed, time and resources are clearly needed for the educational
processes required. Company attitudes and influence are closely linked to the
resources issue; networks’ degree of independence needs to be as high as possible
and therefore more independent funding is needed. At present, IFAs and networks
are being kept apart by companies who dispose of the necessary resources.
Maximising membership participation in the network is largely determined
by whether the power dynamics between unions from developed (particularly the
headquarters unions) and developing countries can be managed successfully. e
use of an educational approach helps this to be managed effectively; what this entails
is explored in the next chapter. How networks are run is a major issue and taking
an educational approach to networking raises the potential for generating the other
success factors. Education allows network members to communicate their own
interests and relate to those of others in ways that build psychological engagement.
Importantly, it strengthens the link between membership identification with the
network and their behaviour. A network’s capacity to mobilise union activity and
resources is also increased because targets are well understood and articulated.
is level of engagement is fundamental to building a strong communication
foundation.
e most successful examples of high levels of engagement involve small groups
of unions, normally brought together on a regional or sub-regional basis. ese small,
closely related groups are able to achieve higher degrees of mutual understanding,
cohesion and coordinated action than existing networks. e point about the
effectiveness of regional as opposed to global networking already appears well taken
in some GUFs. us, the IMF’s World Auto Council has argued to the IMF that
improved regional structures should underpin their World Auto Councils (IMF,
2004).
is discussion has implications for the question raised in the previous chapter
regarding how to proceed with IFAs. Following the analysis laid out in this chapter it
is clear networks that still need to be built effectively to use IFAs should, from their
inception, be created on a minilateral or regional basis, with the bulk of resources
devoted to educational activities rather than, as at present, to global steering
committee meetings. is is an essential reorientation.
NE T WO RK S
• C H A P T E R S E V E N •
International Union Education
It is important to realise that this tool for the union, education, keeps on being
improved and used to keep the movement going forward. In general, trade union
education is an essential tool for the unions as it has the capacity to allow them to
define where they are, where they want to be and how they will get to where they
want to be. It is a tool for unions to deal with the challenges of today’s globalised
workplace and the MNC.
(The African trade unionist who provided this
quotation has asked to remain anonymous.)
Education helps to build solidarity between workers at local, national and
international level. rough affiliation with ITF and participation in ITF education
courses, our airline union learned and had information exchanges with similar
unions in other countries. In one airline company, many protest letters were sent
to management in ailand and they were forced to improve the work rules.
Aranya Pakapath, ICEM Project Coordinator Thailand
Introduction
Th i s chapter examines trade union education in the international context. We
refer here to educational work carried out primarily by the internationals,
which although it is often linked to that carried out at national level, is
distinctive because of the involvement of trade unionists from more than a single
country. Trade union education has historically been, and remains, a central tool of
the internationals’ work and this is unsurprising since some major national unions
had their origins in educational activity. In most GUFs funding spent on this area is
equivalent to income from affiliation fees and consumes more staff resources than
any other area of work, even though its full import and significance are not always
grasped.
Our argument here has four related strands. First, education broadly conceived is
indispensable for helping unions to socialise activists, arm them with arguments and
81
confidence to tackle their problems, form networks and develop their organisations.
Second, the union educational model, which emphasises egalitarian, transparent
and discursive approaches to defining and solving problems, is ideally suited to
international activities. ird, the world’s unions are extremely diverse and have a
wealth of experience in dealing with workers’ problems. is very diversity, often
referred to as a major problem in international unionism, can be turned to advantage
through positive use. Exchanges of experience and the results of experimentation can
be shared constructively in educational environments. Finally, and crucially for both
unions and the internationals themselves, education strongly stimulates democratic
involvement. It has been shown that unions can become ‘learning democracies’
whereby the informal processes of collective learning coexist with, supplement and
support more formal representative democracy (Huzzard, 2000).
International Union Education: Denitions, Extent,
Signicance and Methods
We adopt a broad definition of education. We include within it all forms of activity
designed to build unions’ capacities to deal with members’ problems, from formal
programmes of education at one end of the spectrum to secondments, informal
consultancy and coaching at the other. Nevertheless, the primary activity we are
referring to consists of classroom-based programmes of structured discussion and
participant-centred activities. ese approaches can also be used to good effect
outside of classrooms, and supplemented by the other methods we refer to.
e number of trade unionists participating in education at any one point is
extremely difficult to estimate with any degree of accuracy because basic data are
unavailable. Nevertheless, we attempt a very broad estimate here since it is important
to have some idea of its global reach.
It is likely that on average a GUF works with approximately fifty unions from
developing countries each year and educates somewhere between five hundred
and five thousand unionists at grassroots and leadership levels, i.e. between ten
and one hundred per union. erefore if the number of union participants lies
somewhere between these poles of ten and one hundred, then the global total is in
the region of around 25,000 a year for all GUFs. is is a relatively small proportion
of total membership, since the membership of ITUC affiliates is around 167 million.
Nevertheless, over the last twenty-five years of global union programmes, hundreds
of thousands of trade unionists are likely to have received some level of education.
A large percentage of these participants have maintained their activism and some
have taken senior positions. A good deal of scope remains for further development,
because some of these participants are likely only to have had brief contact with
union education.
Some further insight into the proportion of members involved can be gleaned
INTERNATIONAL UNION EDUCATION
82
from rough estimates of the numbers touched by the relatively large educational
effort made by the internationals and others in the former Soviet Union. An external
evaluation of international union educational work there admitted that figures are
difficult to give with confidence. is comprehensive report, produced by a team of
researchers led by Irina Khaliy of the Russian Academy of Sciences (2005), estimated
that the total number of people involved over the ten years between 1994 and 2004
exceeded 300,000. e total formal membership of the Russian unions alone in
2004 was around 34 million; therefore around one member in one thousand had
experienced some involvement. Recognising that the aim was to train the vital
activist layer rather than all members, the report suggested that the extent of the
work was ‘truly significant’ but that much remained to be done to increase the
numbers involved: ‘ere are still thousands of willing activists at workplace level
who need practical assistance to help them in the new functions they know they
must perform’ (Khaliy, 2005: 3). us, even here, where major efforts have been
made, many remain untouched. Sogge (2004) pointed out that despite the upsurge in
international bodies’ efforts in the former Soviet Union, many requests for assistance
could not be met.
e internationals are responsible for coordinating the educational effort. ey
are well placed to carry out, commission, supervise and expand educational work
since they have unique expertise in international industrial relations. ey are
living concentrations of accumulated historical knowledge, a profound asset from
which affiliates and their activists stand to benefit. ey also have many experienced
individuals who can be described as ‘bridge builders’, people who have been
identified as being important in helping trade unionists from different backgrounds
to work together in effective ways (Garver et al., 2007). e internationals’ staff are
aware of best practice in union educational methods although they are often less
aware of the applicability of these methods outside of the classroom situation in, for
example, network-building contexts. As we argued in the previous chapter, this is
an issue that needs attention.
We show the typical aims, subjects, forms and results of trade union education
in international contexts in Table 12 below. Union education has an overarching
aim, i.e. one that applies to all of its forms: to raise trade unionists’ and workers’
confidence in their capacity to tackle their own problems collectively. Underneath
this umbrella aim, a good number of secondary aims have also existed.
e first and perhaps most obvious is to develop unions’ capacity to carry out
representative functions on behalf of their members, both directly by improving
representational capacity and indirectly by addressing union structures, management
and ways of working. Many unions worldwide do not have extensive experience of
representation nor of organising or mobilising workers. In the case of unions from the
ex-Communist countries for example, education has recently meant demonstrating
the relevance of unions adopting organising, mobilising and representational
THE WORK OF THE INTERNATIONALS
83INTERNATIONAL UNION EDUCATION
Table 12: Typical Target Groups, Subjects, Aims, Forms and Results of International Trade Union Education
Target Group and
Subject
Aims Forms Results
Union ocers
and workplace
representatives:
representing workers
(Typical topics:
organising and
mobilising workers,
health and safety,
negotiating)
Improve worker
representation
Formal education
programmes, study
circles
Improved worker
representation,
democratising eects in
unions
Union ocers,
representatives and
workers: training for
paralegal representatives
Provide free
representation in legal
contexts
Formal education
programmes
Systems of free workers’
representation in
industrial courts, legal
arbitration systems
Trade union tutors:
‘training trainers’
Increase available pool of
worker educators
Formal education
programmes, ‘micro-
teaching’, coaching and
mentoring, information,
materials exchange
through newsletters etc.
Creation and
maintenance of pool of
worker educators
Union ocers
and workplace
representatives:
union management
and organisational
development
Improve union structures,
ways of working; improve
participation of women
and ethnic minorities
Formal educational
programmes, inter-union
exchanges
Improvements in union
eectiveness; increased
participation of women
and ethnic minorities
Workplace
representatives and
workers: very wide range
of workplace -based
subjects including HIV/
AIDS peer counselling
Very wide range
Peer counselling for HIV/
AIDS aim is to train peer
counsellors
Formal educational
programmes, study
circles
Raise identication with
union; specic outcomes
such as creating body of
HIV/AIDS peer counsellors
Workers Raise workers’
participation in unions
and in HIV/AIDS
programmes, skills
training etc.
Wide range of formal and
informal forms
Raised worker
participation in
unions and HIV/AIDS
programmes, improved
worker skills etc.
84
approaches. Issues of union structure and democracy are addressed, especially by
encouraging the participation of women and ethnic minorities in union affairs, often
through women-only courses (Reufter and Rutters, 2002). e second aim, from a
more institutional perspective, has been to offer a practical and effective route out
of the isolation and stagnation experienced by many unions in developing countries
and to provide a much needed impetus for their organisational development.
Programmes therefore aim to impart a sense that they are part of a wider global
movement. More recently, a third aim has appeared: to raise levels of workers’
participation in activities such as HIV/AIDS or skills development programmes. is
type of work is controversial in terms of how faithfully it reflects trade union aims
and how far it is primarily driven by a wish to access funding. In Britain, it has been
argued that government support for building a system of workplace union learning
representatives has in fact brought unions little and represents little more than a
channelling of trade unionism to state ends (McIlroy, 2008). At this point, therefore,
it may be that the overarching aim is not present.
At the global level, the educational emphasis has shifted in recent decades. In an
initial phase, from the 1980s to the mid 1990s, the main thrust was towards diffusing
union educational methods and building cadre systems. Partly because of the
experience of the Scandinavian donors, this was based on essentially self-organised
and directed study circles. ese were experientially based, problem centred, highly
adaptable and, not least, sustainable. From the late 1990s onwards, a second phase
began as international trade union education directly attempted to stimulate more
fundamental change in unions. In many cases union policies, financial structures
and internal democracy were putting a brake on educational efforts and, more
importantly, on broader structural changes. Education designed to make unions
more effective, often masked in the language of ‘renewal’ or ‘modernisation’ to
make it more acceptable to affiliates who might be offended by the idea that their
organisations required overhaul, was launched.
e methods of trade union education used in international work have also
undergone a revolution in the last twenty years. For much of the twentieth century,
the predominant method was formal lecturing by experts to relatively passive
groups of participants. is coexisted with a minority strand, which emphasised
the importance of an experientially based, problem-solving, highly participative
approach whereby participants negotiated between themselves and with tutors
the concrete problems for discussion. Union educational work has more recently
built on this minority strand and has drawn on a set of compatible, overlapping
philosophies eclectically fused by the tutors concerned. A more or less standard
component has been the active learning methods first devised in German workers’
education in the 1920s (Feidel-Mertz, 1964). e 1920s theorists grappled with the
problem of how to build an educational practice appropriate to the thousands of
workplace representatives elected in German unions under the post-First World
THE WORK OF THE INTERNATIONALS
85
War works constitution law. eir solution was essentially to begin by inducting
accounts of problems from participants, and then to approach the issues by using
the experience of those present, and inducting external resources such as the law,
rather than beginning by explaining legal details. is was the origin of the current
orthodoxy. In addition, tutors sometimes drew on the work of other theorists such
as the Brazilian pedagogue Paulo Freire and his book e Pedagogy of the Oppressed
(1970) to stress the emancipatory and empowering nature of education and collective
activity.
All of these approaches encourage participants to step aside from their personal
educational background or position in the union to acquire the tools to address real
issues in the workplace. Lecturing has given way to problem-solving of concrete
issues brought to the group, defined and intensively discussed, inter alia through
simulation exercises. In the last decade, these methods, often under titles such as
‘the new educational methods’, or ‘the ILO approach’ after several important projects
carried out by that organisation, have rapidly gained ground and have begun to
displace traditional methods.
Participative education methods have provided many unions outside of the
developed world with the only sustainable way of conducting education. ey
require virtually no facilities, a vital consideration since funding residential training
has been beyond most unions’ means. Dedicated buildings or large budgets are not
necessary, and the methods provide ways of working that can be used in workplaces
and local offices. Simultaneously, they are resource expanding since they greatly
increase the contribution that unpaid activists can make.
Union educational methods are frequently preferable to normal trade union
decision-taking environments that provide far less participation opportunities and
are governed by more formal rules. eir insistence on the equal right of all to
participate and to share their experience is important in this connection. ey
model a highly participative mode of decision-taking that supplements and balances
the necessary formal meetings based on organisational agendas. is is particularly
relevant where significant cultural differences and power imbalances exist. e
problem-solving educational focus is also usefully polyvalent in relation to the
external world in that it is not linked to a specific subject. It therefore helps unions
respond to collective problems in the workplace and external shocks to their
structures whatever their nature.
Although perceived differently by different unions internationally, union
educational methods constitute a way of working recognised by most unions in
the world. ey therefore constitute a shared frame of reference that can be useful
in providing a basis for constructing international networks through which the
diversity of union functions, structures and modus operandi can be turned into a
positive resource on which participants draw (Croucher, 2004).
INTERNATIONAL UNION EDUCATION
86
Donors, Projects and Funding
e great majority of international union education is carried out through projects,
funded by a small group of donor organisations. Referred to as development
cooperation programmes they are, in the main, funded by the Dutch/Nordic trade
union bodies, established to administer funds from national affiliates and tax payers.
e funds come mainly from government, and to a more limited extent in the case
of FNV, from clauses in collectively bargained contracts negotiated with employers.
An exception is the ITF’s FOC Campaign, funded through the Seafarers’ Fund, i.e.
largely by employers. Another is the prominent example of employer funding for
development work through the IUF’s joint programmes in the tobacco and chocolate
sectors, but these do not provide funds directly for union education. In the cases
of Sweden and Finland, national unions are expected to contribute co-funding
for projects funded through the donor organisations. e ITUC estimated that in
2000, US$10,380,522 was raised for the internationals’ development cooperation
programmes. Given the large scale funding not included in the secretariat accounts
used to compile these figures, this estimate is conservative.
e key donors for large projects have long been the Dutch FNV Mondiaal, LO-
TCO Sweden, LO-FTF Denmark, LO Norway and SASK Finland. LO-TCO has the
largest annual budget, at an estimated 13 million Euro for 2006, closely followed
by FNV with 11.9 million Euro, and SASK with an unconfirmed annual budget of
approximately 3 million Euro. In addition, the German Friedrich Ebert Foundation
(FES), a social democratic foundation using predominantly governmental funds,
provides extensive funding for more localised projects. Active in just under one
hundred countries worldwide, it makes a significant contribution in a decentralised
way. FES has a dedicated programme for the GUFs with an annual budget of 10–15
million Euro per year.
ese organisations award and administer funding in two ways. e first is
multilateral, i.e. by channelling money to the internationals and international
NGOs. e second is bilateral, where money is provided direct to local unions
and NGOs. e pattern of funding is shifting, with donors increasingly opting to
make funds available for bilateral projects, mainly in partnership with civil society
organisations other than unions. For example, the Danish LO-FTF over the last five
years has moved away from working with GUFs, and their current contribution to
the internationals’ work is tiny. Given the significance of project funding for covering
the internationals’ core costs which we noted in Chapter four, any reduction in the
extent to which their risk is spread across donors must be a matter for concern.
Table 13 below provides estimates of the balance of donors’ funds allocated to
bilateral and multilateral development projects in 2004. e table shows high levels
of bilateral funding when measured against the funders’ rhetorical commitment to
the internationals.
THE WORK OF THE INTERNATIONALS
87INTERNATIONAL UNION EDUCATION
Table 13: Estimated Bilateral/Multilateral Allocation of Trade Union Development Funds 2004
Solidarity Support Organisation (donor) Bilateral Multilate ral
LO-TCO (Sweden) 25% 75%
FNV (Netherlands) 70% 30%
SASK (Finland) 25% 75%
LO-FTF (Denmark) 75% 25%
LO (Norway) 80% 20%
Source: Minutes of the Nordic-Dutch & GUF Meeting, Tuesday 5 April 2005
(Document in authors’ possession)
It is increasingly difficult for GUFs to raise educational funding, for three reasons.
e first is the election of more right wing governments in the Netherlands and
Nordic countries, entailing increasingly stringent administrative requirements on
the funding organisations which we detail below. e second is donors’ anxiety that
funding will be used to compensate for the internationals’ declining income from
affiliates. e third is that the majority of donor officials are increasingly drawn from
outside the trade union movement and simply do not understand union objectives or
their ways of operating. eir instinctive inclination is to work with NGOs.
Significant attempts to find new sources of funding to sustain project work are
therefore being made. e reduced global amounts available from some funders
(notably the FNV), and the political sensitivities of company funding have led the
internationals to look towards other national aid structures, such as the British
government’s Department for International Development, and foundations. ere
has been a great expansion in the GUFs’ large-scale funding in certain areas such as
HIV/AIDS, and GUFs with affiliates in industries such as mining and transport (for
example the ICEM and ITF) have taken some of this up. is work is clearly relevant
to members’ interests, but the wider risk is that the search for project funds makes
the internationals increasingly subject to funders’ different, sometimes problematic
and constantly shifting, priorities.
Results
ere have been few systematic studies of the results of international trade union
education. One of the most extensive and detailed is the Khaliy report on work
in the former Soviet Union, based on in-depth research throughout most of the
country’s regions. is suggested that the results of international educational work
in the FSU had been highly significant, and that this had been underestimated
both by the projects themselves and by the few Western researchers who took any
88
interest. Unlike Khaliy’s research team, Western researchers did not venture into the
regions, while project coordinators often moved on to the next project rather than
research the results of the previous one. e Khaliy report argued that the ‘results
were precisely those that could have been expected: unions became more radical and
democratic’ (Khaliy, 2005: 37). Similar results were found by David Sogge (2004),
investigating the work that FNV Mondiaal supported in Eastern Europe and the
former Soviet Union: the union problem was ‘being turned around’ as the title of
his report put it. Perhaps the most eloquent testimony is that of the Federation of
European Employers, whose website says that the Soviet-style FNPR unions in the
former Soviet Union are ‘much reformed’.
e results are closely linked to the processes set in train by the methods. e
overarching result of union education is normally improved confidence to deal with
problems collectively (Charoenloet et al., 2004). Several authors have also pointed
out that education raises social capital between participants, thereby strengthening
the links between them, and may also effect shifts in identity that bring about
stronger union identification (Feidel-Mertz, 1964; Huzzard, 2000; Kirton and Healy,
2004). In our case, the identifications are international and can help to facilitate
network building and the internationals’ solidarity work in supporting activists in
difficulty.
Participative methods have had a considerable and visible democratising effect
on both the internationals themselves and their affiliates, with course participants
going on to play a wide range of roles in representative bodies. Gumbrell-McCormick
(2001) has shown how the ITUC’s drive to improve women’s participation at the
international level in the late twentieth century was effective, when combined with
other political measures in changing both the ITUC and its national affiliates.
Studies at national level have shown how women’s perceptions of their identities
and their identification with unions can be raised by women-only courses (Kirton
and Healy, 2004). Broadly similar results have been reported for educational work
in the USA directed at increasing ethnic minority activism (Margolies, 2008). e
democratising effect referred to by these researchers has been shown to occur even
as a result of courses with other aims (Croucher and Halstead, 1990; Caldwell, 1998;
Croucher, 2004).
As we show in many of the cases elsewhere in this book, activism in many national
contexts carries considerable dangers to those involved, sometimes including risking
their lives. In Latin American countries, trade unionism is ‘high risk’ activism since
the murder of activists is common (Loveman, 1998). Educational activity can play a
major part in establishing the dense and diverse national and international networks
of support that can help to sustain activists. Relationships established through
education have operated to support trade unionists working in the increasingly
repressive states of Belarus and Moldova, facilitated exchanges of organising and
bargaining information between them and helped the internationals to deepen their
THE WORK OF THE INTERNATIONALS
89
understanding of the situations in these countries (Croucher, 2004). In the next
chapter we document further examples drawn from Colombia.
Results are also evident in terms of union organisational development. Significant
improvements in this direction were reported by the five GUFs project that focused
on the modernisation of unions in Russia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan and
Kazakhstan. Started in 2004 and completed in 2008, this involved education on
facilitating organisational change, together with close consultancy support to union
leadership. In many of the unions, the project achieved a combination of ‘hard’
(structural and financial) and ‘soft’ (ways of working and cultural) change, albeit
in differential ways depending on the pre-project readiness of unions to benefit.
In Central Asia, the results have been relatively modest, involving mainly the
establishment of educational schemes in the GUFs’ affiliates. In Ukraine and to a
lesser extent Russia, unions have been stimulated to go a good deal further. While
they too have increased their educational effort, several have also shifted the balance
in the distribution of subscription income more towards their national structures,
thereby allowing meaningful coordinated organising and mobilising strategies to
begin to be developed. For the first time, unions in the Ukraine outside the mining
sector (where the independent miners’ union must constantly organise in the face of
determined opposition from managements and the official union) have undertaken
organising drives (Guliy, 2008).
e effects of participating in GUF-led education are summarised succinctly by
Mare Anceva of the Union of Industry, Energy and Mining of Macedonia:
e Trade Union of Industry, Energy and Mining of Macedonia – SIER – is a
member of two GUFs: IMF (since 1995) and ICEM (since 1996). SIER is a small
union in a small country. When considering all the benefits that come with
membership, it becomes very valuable, particularly for small unions and marginal
economies.
We in SIER appreciated very much the education projects, which resulted in
building up union capacities, awareness of current global trends and broadening
views regarding the organization itself, methods of work, etc. Of course, we
had to find our own ways in all that (no copy and paste is ever possible in this
work), but the influence and the welfare that came out of being a member of
the GUFs are indisputable. GUFs are, first of all, very good and reliable sources
of information. at is of greatest importance in dealing with privatization
and FDI. Just meeting other colleagues, both from transition and developed
countries and having the chance to exchange opinions and experiences is of
special value.
To explain what I mean, the Train-the-trainer project with ICEM/IUF resulted in
having the first trainers within the union (which further resulted in a substantial
increase in the educational activities carried on). e Modernization project
INTERNATIONAL UNION EDUCATION
90
resulted in speeding up changes within the organization, the development of
regional networks and improvements in workplace representation. Now the
Health and Safety project with IMF is expected to result in having three union
experts in SIER who will be able to act as union inspectors and to help health
and safety representatives in the companies in their work.
Finally, the results of union education are not simply ‘downwards’, i.e. transferring
ideas and information to affiliates, but are also ‘upwards’, making significant transfers
in the opposite direction, to the internationals. Union education cannot be seen as
uni-directional learning whereby trade unionists at ‘lower’ levels learn from those at
national and international levels. Labour educators themselves have unfortunately
done little to dispel this misconception. us, otherwise excellent works produced
by experienced practitioners simply deal with what union activists learn (see for
example Spencer, 2002). Internationals can access both industrial relations and
organisational information in this way, use it to relate closely to the unions’ specific
concerns and objective situations, and convey it to other unions. As we explained in
Chapter three, education historically was the way that the internationals acquired
vital information that allowed them to affiliate, assimilate and develop unions as
they expanded outside of their strongholds in the developed world. Without such
long-term, patient development of relationships this knowledge could not have
been established and needs could not have been addressed in effective and efficient
ways.
International union education has probably been most successful where unions
from small groups of countries have been brought together with some external input.
e model has shown itself to be more successful than simply bringing in external
tutors or facilitators from developed countries to conduct courses. Strong examples
of such groupings have existed in both francophone and anglophone West Africa,
Ukraine and Moldova, the Scandinavian countries and the countries of central
Asia. An obvious advantage has been to reduce the linguistic and other practical
difficulties referred to in the previous chapter. In addition, the format allowed a focus
on exchanging experience within a set of cognate problematics since institutional and
cultural environments show a combination of commonality and readily recognised
differences. A limited amount of external input by GUF representatives and foreign
tutors has in these cases allowed a wider perspective when necessary.
An example is a small union in Tanzania, TAMICO, with members in the
mining sector. As a result of the local system of ‘African socialism’ or ‘Ujamaa’
entailing state–union cooperation, the union had no history of organising workers.
In 2001 a team of four organisers was established from the National Union
of Mineworkers of South Africa. is exchange was facilitated by the ICEM
through a regional shop stewards programme funded by Nordic donors and
coordinated by Zimbabweans. e NUM organisers focussed on the Geita Mine,
with approximately 3,000 workers, none of whom were unionised. Within two
THE WORK OF THE INTERNATIONALS
91
weeks, using South African experience and assistance, TAMICO had recruited 400
members. e ICEM helped the newly established branch and shop stewards to
register the union and train its leaders. e union was able to make this dramatic
shift in orientation through targeted contact with another mining union in the
region and coordination with its international.
Education’s Political Marginalisation
Educational activity is important to the internationals, yet as we have shown above,
its funding is problematic because it comes from a small group of European countries
with an increasing predilection for bilateral projects that bypass the internationals.
At the same time, there has been a long-term shift away from discussing trade
union education within the GUFs. e subject is dealt with in a cursory way within
executive bodies. Since these problems exist in a major area of work, why are they
not discussed more extensively? More broadly, why is education marginalised both
in intra-GUF and academic discussion?
Education was regarded by a previous generation of experienced international trade
unionists as a tool of self-evident use in their work. Omer Bécu, general secretary of
the ICFTU, underlined its significance in his preface to Hans Gottfurcht’s mid-1960s
book on the history and current position of the international movement, a work
whose main text also takes the importance of education as obvious (Bécu, 1966).
Bécu describes it as ‘indispensable for the firm anchoring of the trade unions in the
developing world’ (Bécu, 1966: 5). is recognition appears to have diminished since
that time, and the assumption is that education is now conducted simply because it
is requested and/or because it provides funds.
We suggest that there are two core reasons for this neglect. e first is that for
many trade unions the activity is invisible, because it only applies to those most in
need of it and therefore does not touch the relatively powerful and much-researched
unions of the USA and Western Europe. Many large OECD-based trade unions
affiliated to GUFs simply have no contact with the GUFs’ education programmes. At
any one time, at least 60 per cent of affiliates will not have international trade union
education in their consciousness. Only the donor and recipient country affiliates will
have any real understanding of what work is being conducted and its results.
e second reason is the more profound problem of demonstrating palpable
outcomes from educational work. Often, very little baseline information is available
about the unions involved prior to projects starting. For projects begun in the 1980s
and 1990s, it was impossible to secure this information and there was therefore
an almost complete absence of data about what these unions could already do.
Moreover, although in many cases projects build organisational capacity and lead
directly to recruiting new members, many of the results are vital intangibles such as
building confidence in key activists. Impacts are also often indicated in only indirect
INTERNATIONAL UNION EDUCATION
92
ways – for example the successful completion of a negotiation process, which will
always have other factors determining the outcomes.
Attempts to use indicators that take full account of intangibles can also bring
problems with donors because they are in stark contrast to those that governments
find acceptable. Increasingly, governments have sought to impose ‘Logical Framework
Analysis’, a highly formulaic approach to planning and project management, on local
unions. Global unions are consequently often caught between donors and unions as
‘interpreters’, trying to bring these two different languages and orientations into a
meaningful dialogue. ey have not always succeeded, and these approaches have
alienated many unions in the developing world in addition to the GUFs.
Marginalisation of debate around education heightens the risk that it will fall by
the wayside, and be displaced by bilateral activity. Schwass evokes a very real and
sobering prospect:
the future of trade union development cooperation looks bleak. If donors chose
the easy way out by going bilateral, i.e. disregard GUFs as partners and work
directly with national centres and unions in developing countries, then a lot of
added value is lost. It would be the end of meaningful international trade union
development cooperation.
(Schwass, 2004: 23– 4)
is is a crucial and timely point made when donors under pressure to report results
to their governments on an annual basis may find it easier to carry out bilateral
programmes with national unions or NGOs. Development funds set up to build
unions would then have no genuine link to the collective experience of decades of
trade union education carried out through the internationals, a bleak prospect for
donors and recipient organisations alike.
Herein may lie the final reason for the marginalisation of education within the
internationals: the very difficulty of the issue and lack of any obvious or immediate
solutions leads to denial because they do not feel that they can address such a large-
scale problem.
The Education–Research Symbiosis
Research is a function that also suffers from restricted discussion within the
internationals. It is a function with a number of different uses and has considerable
symbiotic potential with the educational approach. Yet the current research deficit
means that the GUFs are under-equipped with the results of dedicated research that
can provide them with the tools they need to make well-supported arguments and
buttress their positions as sectoral experts.
Research on companies can obviously yield significant results for unions, revealing
how corporations interlink, their ownership, supply chains, stakeholder structures
THE WORK OF THE INTERNATIONALS
93
and so on. Greven (2008: 2) argues that ‘solidly based sophisticated’ research on
industrial sectors is essential to US-style strategic campaigning against corporations
that identifies all the pressure points that may be accessed to pressurise them, and
his argument holds equally for organising or collective bargaining. In addition,
detailed and properly contextualised accounts of how unions have developed their
own organisation to approach key problems have great potential. ese can be fed
into courses, but can also be developed from them. Much rich discussion held inside
classrooms draws on unique experience that cannot be accessed by other means and
this needs to be captured for the use of other trade unionists.
Many small or workplace-based unions have little or no research capacity, yet
most of the GUFs themselves carry out little more than the simplest forms of
investigation, providing too little detail and analysis for them to be of great use
to affiliates. Research for the European Industry Federations, on the other hand,
is relatively well developed, partly because researchers in Europe themselves have
the capacity to work without a great deal of funding from the Federations. A good
example is that of the European Institute for Construction Labour Research, which
has existed for over fifteen years and publishes the widely distributed and well-
regarded CLR News. Similarly, the great majority of OECD unions have both their
own research departments and good links to academic networks.
e few examples of effective use of research demonstrate its potential. e
ITF carries out research on key logistics companies, circulating it widely; similarly,
its case studies on organising in the informal economy show the possibilities of
transferring significant experience in this way (Bonner, 2006). High-quality research
is also produced for one relatively well-resourced GUF, the PSI, to underpin its
anti-privatisation campaigning. e PSI Research Unit based at the University of
Greenwich in London produces a steady stream of reports and publications that help
provide solid data to support the PSI’s campaigning.
e ITGLWF developed multilevel research on companies it targeted in the
early 2000s. ‘Multilevel’ because it involved trade unionists at different levels in
companies investigating both their operations and the company’s suppliers fully.
Miller (2004) provides a striking example of the combination of education, research
and determined local organising activity that brought positive results in the Southern
African clothing industry. Activists were trained, and research conducted in Southern
Africa was used to identify the primary contractors of Asian MNCs exploiting the
US Africa Growth and Opportunity Act in the Maseru Export Processing Zone. is
was in turn used to exert pressure on the US companies ordering the goods, with
the result that one-third of the 26 companies in membership of the Lesotho Textile
Exporters’ Association conceded union recognition to some degree.
It might be suggested that research capacity of the required type does in fact exist,
in the form of the Global Union Research Network (GURN). is was established
to try and bridge the gap between unions and academics, notably by coordinating
INTERNATIONAL UNION EDUCATION
94
the ILO and academics to generate dedicated research. It brought together a group
of supportive academics and research institutions worldwide but the results have
been small in relation to GUFs’ needs. In addition, donors are increasingly funding
research, such as that carried out by the Observatório Social in Brazil, but without
union involvement or developing union capacity to carry out their own research.
e need is for dedicated researchers to work on a GUF by GUF basis, with
increased resources. GUFs require databases of supply chains and collective
agreements, but unions will not provide these for public display on the web.
In educational contexts, high-trust relations can be built, allowing exchange of
relatively sensitive documents of this type. As Miller shows, educational approaches
can make a further contribution by developing research capacity in local activists
through a mix of classroom-based and coaching activities.
Conclusion
Vitally, it has a democratising effect within unions, from which the internationals
have already benefited, raising the participants’ levels of commitment to operating
within existing structures. Much academic discussion of union renewal all too
often misses the essential processes of human interaction and development that
necessarily underpin any such renewal. ese are enhanced by education. But
slow, patient work developing activists through long-term education programmes
and informal dialogue does not hit any headlines and is currently under-discussed
both in the internationals and more widely. It is nevertheless a significant aspect of
efforts to raise the level of contact between the world’s unions and to improve their
effectiveness. Vitally, it has a democratising effect within unions, from which the
internationals have already benefited, raising the participants’ levels of commitment
to operating within existing structures.
We advocate further expanding this type of work. Yet the intermittent and
precarious resources available to the GUFs for education are under threat and
constitute a problem requiring full discussion. e internationals’ reliance on
donors’ funds for developmental work masks the reluctance of national unions
in developed countries to pay anything more than relatively small amounts to
international bodies, as discussed in Chapter four. is is an immediate problem and
the signs of change are currently running in the wrong direction. Swedish unions,
previously highly reliable contributors to educational projects are now seeking to
minimise their overall financial contribution. e problem is as serious as the dues
income problem outlined earlier and similarly requires an open political discussion
between unions about whether they are prepared to make the necessary investment
in international work.
THE WORK OF THE INTERNATIONALS
• CHAPTER EIGHT •
Case Study – a GUF’s Relationship
with a Multinational Company
Introduction
Th i s chapter illustrates many of the themes developed and discussed earlier.
It is a case study of the ICEM’s relationship with Anglo American plc (AA),
analysing how the GUF, national unions in South Africa, Ghana and Colombia
and the company interacted with positive results for workers. e main institutional
players are represented in Diagram 4.
Diagram 4: Anglo American and its Relationships to other Main Players
e case was selected for two reasons. First, it was chosen because prima facie
it allowed detailed examination of how a GUF acted as a major player in advancing
workers’ interests. Second, unusually high-quality longitudinal information was
obtained through the long-term involvement of one of the authors, supplemented by
extensive project reports, company and union documentation.
We show how the GUF developed a positive relationship with a multinational by
integrative bargaining on an issue of great significance both to it and to workers; this
built company consent for distributive bargaining by affiliates in a different part of
96
its operation on another continent. e narrative demonstrates the significance of
strong articulation developed over many years between the national and international
union levels, in part created and supported by a strong educational input. e GUF’s
role was crucial: none of the national unions in the case had previously related
effectively to multinationals. e GUF learned from the process and transferred the
approach elsewhere in the world. e case confirms that, contrary to Neuhaus’ (1981)
suggestion, GUFs can initiate significant developments and need not simply react to
other actors’ agendas.
e case is presented in three sections. e first introduces the company and
its relationship with the ICEM. e second analyses work developed in Ghana
around HIV/AIDS in the mining sector. e third section examines the dynamics
of rebuilding union dialogue with mining companies in Colombia. Finally, we draw
broad conclusions and examine the case’s wider relevance.
The Company, the ICEM, National Trade Unions and Their
Relationships
Anglo American is one of the world’s largest corporations, ranked 88 in the Financial
Times Stock Exchange index of the world’s largest 500 companies and employing
162,000 people worldwide in 2006. Its operations are focussed on mining. e
company, like other natural resources companies, has enjoyed rising prices for
its products since 2000, and its increasing profits in that period are significant
background to the case.
e company, although owned mainly by British financial institutions, operates
in many countries but its main mining operations are in Sub-Saharan Africa and
Latin America. It was for some time South Africa’s largest conglomerate and a key
corporate player in negotiating the post-apartheid employment settlement (von
Holdt, 2004). It has a complex and highly devolved structure, claiming in response
to criticisms of the activities of companies in which it has a sizeable interest (War on
Want, 2007) that it does not have ‘management control’ of them (Anglo American,
2007). Following the practice of many such corporations, the associated companies
have high levels of managerial autonomy and seek to establish internal leadership
in both efficiency and CSR matters. In this sense it is typical of the modern
multinational, and can be conceived of as a ‘federation’ (Andersson et al., 2007)
or a grouping of companies linked by a range of methods including overlapping
directorships and shareholdings. e overall company composition in 2004 is
portrayed in Table 14.
It is clear from Table 14 that in 2004 it had a controlling financial interest in both
Anglo Coal and Anglo Gold Ashanti (AGA). is interest was reduced to 41.8 per
cent in April 2006; but until spring 2007, AA retained two directors on the AGA
board. In 2000, AA bought a 33 per cent share in the Cerrejón mine in Colombia; by
THE WORK OF THE INTERNATIONALS
97
2006 three companies, AA, BHP Billiton and Xstrata, were equal shareholders. AA
works closely with Cerrejón management.
CASE STUDY
Table 14: Anglo American plc – Business Overview, 2004
Business Area M ain Countries of
Operation
Key Subsidiaries Percentage Ownership
of Subs idiaries
Platinum South Africa Anglo Platinum 74.1%
Gold South Africa Anglo Gold Ashanti 54.5% (17% in 2008)
Diamonds South Africa De Beers 45%
Coal South Africa, Colombia Anglo Coal 100%
Base Metals Chile Anglo Base Metals 100%
Industrial Minerals UK, France, Belgium Anglo Industrial Minerals 100%
Paper and Packaging South Africa, Russia Anglo Paper and
Packaging
100%
Ferrous Metals and
Industries
South Africa, Australia Anglo Ferrous Metals and
Industries
100%
Source: Anglo American plc, The Business: An O verview, 14 February 2004
Company relations with stakeholders have to be built on a long-term basis, Sir
Mark Moody-Stuart, chairman, argued to shareholders at the April 2008 AGM. Fixed
sites and high front-end expenditure mean ‘that we have to live with the judgements we
make about our ability to operate ethically in particular locations’ (Anglo American,
2008). ‘Resource nationalism’ increasingly means the company has to attend to its
wider political profile throughout its operations. AA and AGA are highly engaged with
international development and since 2000 AA has made a considerable contribution
to the UK government’s Africa strategy. e company’s CSR efforts are also reflected
in its role in establishing and building the Global Business Coalition (GBC), set up
to promote business responses to HIV/AIDS, which Sir Mark Moody-Stuart chairs.
e GBC claims that it has supported millions of people through implementing local
workplace programmes with its 220 member companies.
AA has taken a ‘business case’ approach to HIV/AIDS provision, although there
is considerable congruence between business and CSR rationales. AA’s subsidiary
Anglo Coal was one of the first companies in the world to calculate the precise
economic benefits of providing antiretrovirals (ARVs), but this ‘making disease
management pay’ (the phrase is that of Dr Richard Gaunt (2007) of AA’s major
competitor Rio Tinto) approach is becoming well established in mining companies.
Research carried out in Anglo Coal showed in 2006 that it was economic to provide
98
private medical insurance, including possible VCT and ARVs, for all employees
and their dependents rather than to provide nothing. e company’s preliminary
cost-benefit analysis is shown in Table 15 below. After the first year, the costs of
providing drugs were estimated to decline relative to savings from absenteeism and
healthcare. is calculation accompanied a move beyond the classic position taken
by companies, whereby they deny any legal responsibility for workers’ sexual health.
e latter position clearly rejects any real responsibility for reducing risk, in order to
limit potential liabilities (Weait, 2007).
THE WORK OF THE INTERNATIONALS
Table 15: Anglo Coal – Preliminary Cost Benet Analysis of Providing ART
Duration ART Cost per
Month
(Rands)
Absenteeism
Savings per
Month
Health Care
Cost Saving
Per month saved vs no ART – 12 months R2223 R1052 R755
Per month saved vs no ART – 18 months R1652 R1093 R804
Per month saved vs no ART – 24 months R1304 R1126 R837
Additional saved CD4 100–250 vs less than 100 –
Two years pre-positive
R458 R396
Source: Ms D. Muirhead, Aurum Institute for Health Research, presentation
(Document in authors’ possession)
e company has scope and reasons for improving both its health and safety
record and its public image: in 2007 it reported that forty-four people were killed
in its mining operations, and its practices in relation to indigenous communities
have been sharply criticised (War on Want, 2007). Part of its reply to War on
Want’s criticisms was to point to its record in publicly insisting that the Colombian
government attend to the physical defence of trade unionists. Like many mining
employers, AA is reconciled to trade unionism and almost all of its mining sites
have a major union presence. e company has sought to construct positive relations
with unions, including them in efforts to improve efficiency by cost reduction; union
cooperation in health and safety has brought major benefits to the rate of return
on capital employed. eir experience at the New Denmark mine in South Africa
demonstrated this dramatically, when union partnership helped raise the return
on capital employed from 24.7 per cent in 2001 to 43.2 per cent in 2003. Moody-
Stuart used this experience as a model for others in the company to follow (Anglo
American, 2003). Hence, the links between trade unionism, health and safety and
profitability are well recognised at the top of the company.
99
Anglo Gold has robust long-term relations with the South African National Union
of Mineworkers (NUM), based on AA’s ‘progressive positions’ on recognising black
unions in South Africa, and its part in the transition to democracy (Anglo American,
2003; 2008). e NUM itself had a central role in ending apartheid and enjoys great
prestige within the trade union movement both in Africa and internationally, with
strong bilateral links with other mining unions, and high-profile participation in
the ICEM and the IMF. e NUM has long emphasised HIV/AIDS as an issue,
having concluded an agreement with the South African Chamber of Mines on
the subject in 1993 (N’Deba and Hodges-Aeberhard, 1998). e union has a broad
political conception of its representative functions and has successfully negotiated
protection for contract workers (von Holdt and Webster, 2005). e NUM has
conducted personnel exchanges with many African mining unions and has had a
long-term relationship with the Ghana Mineworkers’ Union (GMWU) based on
personal contacts developed through the ICEM Regional Committee. e GMWU
is itself a strong union within the well-developed Ghanaian trade union movement
(Frazer, 2008), and is therefore a relatively equal partner for the NUM. It is a highly
politicised organisation, focussed on dialogue with the state which until recently ran
the mines. It was only therefore relatively recently that the GMWU had to negotiate
with private management and the union stood to learn from a relationship with the
NUM.
Exchanges between the ICEM and AA were partly based on the long-standing
relationship between Fred Higgs (then ICEM general secretary, retired 2006) and Sir
Mark Moody-Stuart. e two were in contact when Moody-Stuart held management
positions at Royal Dutch Shell and Higgs was National Oil Industry Officer at the
UK’s Transport and General Workers’ Union. is contact continued through
difficult years for Shell and for oil workers, including the 1995 Brent Spar incident.
e relationship was renewed through their joint participation in the United Nations
Global Compact’s Advisory Committee from that body’s foundation in 2002. e
committee was established to help the Global Compact develop speedily into a
credible CSR mechanism, working directly under Kofi Annan’s office at the United
Nations. Its membership included representatives of civil society, labour (GUFs
and the ITUC) and business. Shortly after its creation, Moody-Stuart became
AA chairman but retained his Advisory Committee position. e foundations of
trust between Higgs and Moody-Stuart were built on the fact that, unlike other
participants, both came from an industrial relations background. ey held similar
views on the minimum ‘integrity measures’ that would be credible for the Global
Compact to be an effective body, based on their experience of industrial monitoring
and complaints procedures. eir capacity for joint action was higher than either had
with the non-governmental organisations involved.
ere was also a long term and complex web of relationships between the ICEM
and its key affiliate the NUM, and of both with the CEO of Anglo Gold Ashanti,
CASE STUDY
100
Bobby Godsell. Godsell is an exceptional business person. On his retirement from
the company in 2008, he was credited by Moody-Stuart with a significant role in
South Africa’s transition to democracy (Anglo American, 2008). An industrial
relations expert, he was hailed as an ‘organic intellectual’ of South African business
(Handley, 2005) for his part in South Africa’s transition. e editor of works on
South Africa’s future (Berger and Godsell, 1988), he persuaded a sceptical business
community of the merits of the Labour Relations Act in its amended 2002 version,
which improved legal cover for contract workers (Bidoli, 2004). In 2002, he surprised
a business meeting in New York by wearing an NUM strike T-shirt (ibid.). Godsell
had a close relationship with Cyril Ramaphosa, the first NUM president and
subsequent secretary general of the ANC who became chairman of the Mondi paper
and packaging group after its de-merger from AA (Bidoli, 2004; Mondi, 2007).
In West Africa, long-term relationships also existed between AGA management
and medical staff, the ICEM and the Ghana Mineworkers’ Union (GMWU). e
GMWU president, John Brimpong, was the Ghana TUC’s HIV/AIDS representative,
and a member of the ICEM regional and international executives who was well
known both within Ghanaian mining communities and to local mine management.
Brimpong was at the centre of a constellation of industry and community contacts
built up over forty years of union activity. An already close relationship between
GMWU leadership, the ICEM and senior AGA medical staff was cemented through
the latter’s HIV/AIDS project.
The ICEM’s HIV/AIDS Pilot Projects: Background and
Signicance
e ICEM was one of the first GUFs, with ITF and EI, to take a lead on promoting
HIV/AIDS action by unions since workers in these sectors are disproportionately
affected. From 2002 the ICEM worked with affiliates to develop a strategy and initial
activity. e union problems identified when dealing with HIV/AIDS were defined
as lack of leadership, the stigma around testing and a lack of sustainable funding
for treatment. An additional barrier in Africa was the reluctance of workplace
representatives, often from Christian backgrounds, to confront the issue. At that
point virtually no ICEM affiliate, except those in South Africa, Ghana and Botswana,
recognised HIV/AIDS as a union issue. In countries outside Africa, ICEM affiliates,
notably in Eastern Europe, strongly resisted the argument. e African affiliates
could therefore potentially become international leaders to persuade others of the
case for taking up the area of work.
Following six months of consultation with affiliates already active around the
issue and experienced HIV/AIDS activists, the ICEM and these affiliates decided
to promote medical provision and prevention programmes, and to negotiate anti-
discrimination policies through pilot schemes that could later be adopted elsewhere
THE WORK OF THE INTERNATIONALS
101
in the world. e agenda was therefore more ambitious than the earlier common
union practice of simply carrying out awareness campaigns. It entailed developing
core expertise, raising funds from new sources and dialogue with both employers
and government.
HIV/AIDS is a central labour management concern for multinationals invested in
Africa and Eastern Europe. In Sub-Saharan mining, infection rates are approximately
double national averages and frequently higher. In Zambia the BBC reports a national
infection rate of 14 per cent, and an estimated 50 per cent in mining communities
(BBC News Online, published 22/06/2006). ese high rates are explained by four
factors. e first is the remoteness of mining operations and the communities
surrounding them. Second, single sex workers’ hostels, although reducing in number,
are widespread. ird, many male migrant and contract workers are away from
their partners, further stimulating high levels of prostitution and ‘second families’.
Fourth, stigma and denial around sexual practice and prevention of infection is
widespread.
e private sector plays a significant role in general healthcare in these
communities, making miners dependent on companies for health, and in some
cases life, as well as work. e majority of clinics and hospitals in mining regions
are to some extent privately supported or funded. Most miners working directly for
multinationals at present are members of private medical insurance schemes which
provide antiretroviral drugs, although this is a recent development and rarely applies
to indirect or contract workers. us, companies play a considerable role in the
diagnosis of HIV/AIDS and in providing access to treatment as well as in healthcare
more broadly.
e diagnosis of HIV/AIDS raises significant dilemmas for management and
workplace representatives alike and is therefore extremely demanding for individuals
on both personal and professional levels. If a worker with HIV/AIDS is threatened
with dismissal, this raises fundamental issues about that worker’s future. Workers’
fear of losing their jobs demands strong workplace representation by the union,
since local management may take action against them despite statements by senior
company staff thousands of miles away. e issue giving rise to the dismissal threat
may not be the simple fact of the worker having HIV/AIDS. For example, a worker
receiving antiretrovirals through a company medical scheme may face dismissal for
a gross misconduct matter. e local manager and workplace representative will
both have to take personal responsibility for evaluating the cost to the worker, his
family and the community of him losing his job and, simultaneously, his access to
treatment.
Workers must be convinced that testing will not lead to dismissal and, to
a lesser degree, they also must be confident that it will lead to treatment. is
should be seen in the context that until legislation changed in 2003, mining
companies in South Africa practised compulsory testing for workers at the point
CASE STUDY
102
of recruitment, refusing those who tested positive (Kenny, 2004). e role of trade
unions is important in negotiating, verifying and rigorously policing any assurances
by securing anti-discrimination and anti-victimisation protections in collective
agreements, promoting and monitoring VCT provision and by convincing workers
that they will not suffer if tested.
Most workers, even in highly infected areas do not present themselves for testing.
Only tiny percentages of workers normally volunteer, particularly if testing is offered
by company doctors in company facilities. Companies draw a distinction between
confidential and anonymous testing, arguing that they practise the latter, but this
fails to reassure workers. Most employees in African mining companies have limited
confidence in management’s concern for their interests (von Holdt, 2004) and they
require credible guarantees of protection from company action against them that
only union involvement can offer.
Preparing for and Implementing the Projects
In September 2002, on the ICEM’s initiative, an International Framework Agreement
was signed between Anglo Gold, ICEM and the NUM, the first such agreement
signed with a company operating in Africa. e accord was signed in public after
the UN’s World Summit in South Africa, and promoted as part of the company’s
sustainable development work. It had essentially symbolic rather than substantive
significance in tackling HIV/AIDS, because it contains no clause on the subject. It
nevertheless symbolically cemented the relations between the three signatories and
was relevant background to their cooperation in the HIV/AIDS field.
By 2004 the ICEM had launched an international HIV/AIDS initiative, designed
to identify pilot workplaces where the GUF and its affiliates could develop workplace
provision, with the support of employers, local hospitals and international funding.
e project aimed to mainstream the issue in affiliates’ policies and practice. It was
decided to work in two Ghanaian mining regions, Obuasi and Tarkwa, with Anglo
Gold Ashanti and its partner company with which it was merged in April 2004,
Ashanti Goldfields, because of the working relationship with the companies and
the GMWU’s clear commitment to conduct the demanding programme. Overall,
the project worked within the comprehensive guidance offered by the ILO Code of
Practice on HIV/AIDS in the Workplace; the immediate objective was to implement
a strategy based on the Code. e pilot project aimed to secure, through negotiations
with these key employers, the establishment or development of dedicated medical
facilities for VCT and treatment, and adequate anti-discrimination and non-
victimisation clauses in agreements. e pilots would in due course identify other
important needs, including a need for trained peer counsellors from union cadres
to support miners diagnosed positive. ese counsel people before and after testing,
helping them to make lifestyle changes and to manage their treatment.
THE WORK OF THE INTERNATIONALS
103
ese companies, unlike many others, have professional staff to manage HIV/
AIDS to high technical standards. By 2004 the ICEM also had acquired dedicated
HIV/AIDS coordinators. e experts responsible for CSR and HIV/AIDS in both
the company and the GUF facilitated technical discussion between the partners.
Technical staff involvement also helped build consensus within the companies since
there was marked management resistance within them, as in other companies,
to acquiring inherently difficult and open-ended responsibilities which generate
considerable uncertainty about future costs and requirements. For all parties
involved, there is no margin for error. Even small technical mistakes in HIV/AIDS
testing and treatment programmes are likely to reduce uptake and to make restoring
miners’ confidence very difficult.
It has been suggested that the most effective company strategy is to carry out
in-house programmes, without involving partners (Husted, 2003). Yet the AA
companies rejected this option. Company engagement with the GUF and local
unions occurred against the background of strong relationships outlined above, but
its immediate cause was the practical issue of testing and the positive effect that the
company felt the union could have. e huge scope for charismatic union leaders to
influence workers’ perceptions is difficult to envisage outside of the African mining
context. eir role is highly significant well beyond the workplace, since they are seen
as community, and not simply as workplace, leaders. is influence has frequently
been referred to by AA managers. us, Brian Brink, AA’s senior vice-president for
health, highlighted the partnership with other organisations including unions as
‘crucial to success’ in tackling HIV/AIDS (Business Action in Africa, 2007: 20).
Senzeni Zokwana, the president of the NUM (elected president of the ICEM at
its Bangkok Congress in 2007) personally took the issue of HIV/AIDS to mines.
He carried out awareness raising activities and encouraged testing. He publicly
submitted himself for personal testing at each mine, paving the way for successful
testing drives. e union also undertook a wider educational effort to train peer
educators and negotiators to bargain for protections for people living with HIV/
AIDS.
HIV/AIDS programmes are often reported in vague ways, but in the cases of AGA
and AA more widely, tangible results could be reported. In AGA in 2004, 10 per cent
of employees were being tested; in the company’s 2006 annual report, 75 per cent
were reported as having been tested. By June 2006 34 per cent of AA’s workers had
been tested: 9,758 of an estimated positive work force of 28,294 were enrolled in
the company’s HIV/AIDS programme, 3,772 of whom were taking up antiretroviral
treatment. In comparative terms, these are high take-up rates and a significant
improvement on previous levels.
A further concrete result is identifiable, since the Ghana pilots triggered
agreements with the employer and government. AGA signed a public–private
partnership agreement with the Ghanaian Ministry of Health in 2005 to provide
CASE STUDY
104
HIV/AIDS testing and treatment and malaria control in the Obuasi mining area,
an initiative supported by the ICEM. In this ‘co-investment’ project (Vuckvic et al.,
2005), the company donates the infrastructure of the hospital and available medical
staff. It provides VCT and ART to its employees and their dependents at these
facilities through an agreement with the Ghanaian government and with insurance
company funding.
e project provided an essential first step in establishing the possibility of
moving beyond an awareness-raising model by making material progress and showing
concretely how that could be done. It also made the case to companies outside those
directly involved that union cooperation is a positive factor. e pilot initiative has
been exported, at the time of writing, to other companies in Ghana and also to
Botswana, Nigeria, Namibia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Côte d’Ivoire and Mali.
We now turn to the second element of the case study: ICEM–union–company
relationships at the Cerrejón mine in Colombia.
Colombia
is part of the study focuses on relations between the Sintracarbón union and
Carbones del Cerrejón, part owned by AA. As indicated above, AA is closely involved
in Cerrejón with regular visits to the mine by senior AA staff including Edward
Bickham, executive vice president, external affairs. e African initiatives described
above were essential background to developments in Colombia since they created
awareness within the GUF and the company that positive relations on that continent
were yielding benefits for both sides. It also shows how education played a significant
role in building relationships between Colombian unions and generating union
capacity to act locally in relation to AA and other companies.
For trade unionists, Colombia has long represented the most dangerous country
in the world. e civil war has placed unions in a highly vulnerable position since
they have to operate with and in the interstices between government, guerrillas,
paramilitary forces, multinationals and criminals (Pearce, 2004). Hundreds of union
leaders have been assassinated during the last decade, causing activists to reduce or
abandon their union work, leaving small, isolated unions. At the time of writing,
many trade unionists have again been forced into hiding by a wave of violence.
Overcoming Problems of Inter-union Dialogue
Colombian unions have varied and powerful political orientations that tend to
fragment them. Unions in the ICEM sectors are affiliated to the main centre-left
Colombian union federation, Central Unitaria de Trabajadores (CUT). ey have
a strong orientation towards political action, and the state has the legal right
to intervene in their affairs. Up until 2000, none of the unions discussed below
THE WORK OF THE INTERNATIONALS
105
provided representative services to members and had only minimal experience of
collective bargaining, while some resisted dialogue with employers on political
grounds. Certain unions actively supported oppositional movements while others
retained their historical basis in left-wing groups although there is no organisational
or political link between the unions and the left-wing guerrilla organisations ELN
or FARC. One union was built from the radical M19 grouping, although M19
was disbanded and no longer directs union strategy. Unions have strong factional
dynamics and most unions experience mistrust between executive members that
becomes acute at high points in the societal conflict.
Unions in the ICEM’s industries also have significant industrial differences. For
example the Sintraelecol union is a large public sector union, with the highest level
of security threat for union leadership. Miners, among the first Colombian workers
to organise in the early twentieth century, have a respected position, but are also
exposed in relation to threats of violence against them. Sintraquim, by contrast, is
a small, relatively moderate union representing a majority of women working in the
chemicals and pharmaceuticals sectors, mainly concerned with the lack of secure
jobs and factory closures. ese differences make it difficult for unions to cooperate,
both between themselves but also within the CUT and the ICEM. is reinforces
their sense of isolation and weakness in relation to employers. It should be noted
however that the ICEM affiliates have attempted to work in a coordinated way for ten
years as the ICEM Colombia Committee, which reflects their increasingly important
positioning within CUT and, more recently, with employers.
The ICEM’s Interventions
e foundations of the ICEM’s work were educational, and projects moved through
three overlapping stages: building the GUF–union relationship, reviewing the unions’
own structures and ways of working and finally bargaining with companies.
e ICEM’s work with Colombian unions began in the 1980s through the
Education Department of the Miners’ International Federation (MIF), which merged
with ICEF in 1995 to form the ICEM. Ann Browne, then MIF education officer,
established contacts with the mining unions, initially informally, focussing on
mining communities and child labour, which were priority issues for the MIF at
that point. ese contacts led to a relationship with the current leadership of the
Sintracarbón (at that time Sintraintercor) union.
Sintracarbón and the Carbones del Cerrejón management were central to wider
developments in Colombia. e Cerrejón mine is one of the largest open caste coal
mines in the world and Sintracarbón is also an important ICEM affiliate. Its president,
Jaime Deluquez, is a member of both the ICEM Latin American regional committee
and its international executive committee. He is a well respected and highly effective
member of the international with a deep awareness of the possibilities and limits
CASE STUDY
106
of international trade unionism, formulating clear requests to the ICEM and its
affiliates in ways that could be readily understood and responded to. He is therefore
in a strong position to represent the interests of his own union and the other ICEM
Colombian affiliates at international level. His reputation with management was
that of a capable and focussed leader. He played a key role in helping build the
relationships between Sintracarbón, Carbones del Cerrejón and the ICEM.
In 1975 the state-owned company Carbones de Colombia (Carbocol) sold 50 per
cent of the Cerrejón mine to Intercor, an ExxonMobil subsidiary. In the late 1990s the
mine and the surrounding region suffered from poor health and safety conditions and
in response to Colombian requests were included in the MIF’s international Health
and Safety Project for mining unions. Interestingly, the GMWU also participated in
this successful global health and safety project. e project, in addition to campaigning
for ratification of the ILO’s mining safety convention, C.176, provided education and
consultancies for unions to develop their own health and safety capacity and to
work with managements to build medical services. Significant gains were made by
the union, including introducing the first occupational health testing system in the
mine and creating a good working relationship with company medical staff. e
doctor currently in charge of the Cerrejón medical facilities, Dr Salvador Uricoechea,
first met the union through this programme. Uricoechea and the union established
comprehensive systems for data collection and testing for occupational diseases.
is programme ended in 1998 and simultaneously a dedicated educational
methods programme began, for ICEM affiliates in Colombia and those interested
in affiliating. e consistent funding and support it received for fifteen years from
the Swedish metal and mining union Metall (now IFMetall) and LO-TCO was
essential. From 1998 until 2004 the programme was coordinated from Bogotá by
the experienced trade unionist Carlos Bustos. e high-quality work focussed on
educational methods for Colombian regional and national leaders, with particular
emphasis on providing a safe and inclusive educational environment for national and
local leaders. e project funded them to travel by air rather than by the inherently
dangerous road routes and provided an important way for national leaders to meet
their own regional and local activists.
Union educational methods provided democratic and safe contexts for trade
unionists to debate and find solutions to highly threatening problems. e educational
setting provides clear rules and participation, and emphasises equality between
participants – exceptional emphases in the national context. For those that came
from a highly politicised background, the experience of participatory education was
initially very difficult to come to terms with, as they were accustomed to lecture-
based, and position-taking modes of exchange. At first, classroom discussions were
highly combative, leading to absenteeism. Less senior, female and younger trade
unionists were initially unwilling to participate in joint activities, but this changed as
the focus gradually shifted from aggressive political debate towards finding practical
THE WORK OF THE INTERNATIONALS
107
and practicable joint solutions to industrial relations problems.
Over time, participants grew to appreciate the educational environment, and the
removal of restrictions and stress when they attended project activities. Attendance
gradually improved. For many involved, the risks of congregating in one location
meant that for attendance at project activities to be so consistent over the long term
the benefits must have been significant. Education provided an opportunity to build
social capital: friendships and good working relationships were formed between
activists from the same and different unions. is had a long term effect on their
behaviour at ICEM and other union events and also provided them with a firm social
base from which to venture into trying to address their individual unions’ ways of
working. By 2004 the ICEM’s six affiliates were all prepared to start reviewing their
organisations.
A new phase of education was therefore directed at examining these issues. e
unions perceived their problems to be recruiting new members, weak finances,
corruption, and lack of education at any level, all contributing to organisational
stagnation. Both joint and single union seminars were carried out using ICEM staff
to initiate thinking around organisational change, focussing in particular on the
difficult recruitment issue. Although this phase was relatively short, the discussions
stimulated union executives to think beyond the immediate crisis that they faced, to
consider longer-term objectives and to regard the possibilities of recruitment more
positively. In brief, they began to take a more strategic approach, including in terms
of their relations with employers.
Dialogue with Employers
A final phase of the ICEM’s educational work in Colombia turned to the core issue
of dialogue with employers. By 2003 collective bargaining had effectively atrophied.
Colombian law allows management and unions to extend collective bargaining
agreements without revision at six monthly intervals, and the practice had become
common. e level of danger for union leaderships is raised during negotiations with
management, discouraging negotiators from resuming discussions. e education
programme was redirected towards a process of formally denominated social
dialogue, directly mediated by the ICEM, involving the six ICEM affiliates and eight
nominated MNCs.
e original MNCs identified were:
• Anglo American (UK)
• BHP Billiton (Australia)
• Xstrata (Switzerland)
• Linde (Germany)
• Codensa/Endesa (Spain)
CASE STUDY
108
• Owens Illinois (USA)
• Smurfitt (Ireland)
• Union FENOSA (Spain).
e related ICEM affiliates were:
• Sintraelecol (Elecric Power)
• Sintravidricol (Glass)
• Sintracarcol (Paper & Cardboard)
• Sintracarbón (Coal)
• Sintraquim (Chemicals & Pharmaceuticals)
• Fenaltec (Electrical Engineers).
One-day meetings occurred every quarter, preceded by ICEM affiliate meetings
and facilitated by the ICEM leadership to agree areas for negotiation. Complementary
research was commissioned by the ICEM on specific areas such as contract labour,
and union-only and joint training activities were organised on new issues such as
HIV/AIDS. e areas identified by the group for negotiation included security for
trade unionists, health and safety, HIV/AIDS and contract labour.
A process of ICEM-mediated negotiations with employers was initiated around
this agenda and carried on for several years with an increasing emphasis, encouraged
by the ICEM, on bilateral negotiations between employers and unions. International
mediation provided both sides with an externally created platform to restart direct
collective bargaining. AA and the Spanish-owned utilities multinational Endesa
(with whom the ICEM has an International Framework Agreement) were pivotal
to company participants responding to central company prompting to become
involved. e security and health and safety agendas were especially attractive to
these companies.
A framework for dialogue was agreed in the early stages, designed to provide
clear mechanisms for unions and employers. e central commitment of both
the companies and union partners was to seek common ground and agreement.
Importantly, the partners committed to participation in the process regardless of
any local disputes or ongoing collective bargaining. Partners were asked to nominate
formally a small team of representatives responsible for maintaining dialogue within
their organisation. ese were responsible for ensuring their consistent participation,
for securing bilateral meetings at workplace level to debate areas of common interest,
for maintaining regular communication with partners and the ICEM and finally
for contacting the ICEM general secretary if difficulties arose. e importance of
continuity of personnel from both unions and companies was emphasised, to ensure
that momentum was maintained.
In 2004, the process, still at an early stage, was buttressed by state involvement.
e government appears to have been interested in closer relations with companies,
and in discussing human rights issues both with them and with the ICEM. Employer
THE WORK OF THE INTERNATIONALS
109
and union partners attended regular meetings with the Ministry for Social Protection,
to present the issues under negotiation and seek support from the ministry for the
principles of their work. e meetings were headed by Jorge León Sánchez, vice-
minister for social protection, and his staff, joined initially by government human
rights specialists. Areas for future work were identified including promoting HIV/
AIDS initiatives and developing tripartite dialogue on setting limits and standards
on contract and agency labour. Importantly, the vice-minister committed himself to
prioritise action when unions approached the ministry about union representatives’
security.
e most significant outcome of the ICEM programme was improved dialogue
between Sintracarbón and Carbones del Cerrejón. On 1 December 2004 negotiations
between Carbones del Cerrejón and Sintracarbón re-opened. e negotiations were
closely watched by other companies and unions to see what could be achieved at
a time when the level of violence against, and murder of, unionists was especially
high. During the negotiation period the union negotiators and their families were
threatened with extortion and assassination and the entire negotiating team was
forced into hiding. Sintracarbón contacted the ICEM to inform them of the threats.
e ICEM immediately contacted Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, and requested that they
contact Cerrejón management to establish whether the company was in a position
to minimise the risk. AA management and the union immediately issued a joint
statement affirming their belief in fundamental labour rights and condemning
intimidation. e company drew the threats to the attention of the vice president
of Colombia, asking that the personal security of those involved be ensured. e
negotiation process was able to continue; and although the threats did not entirely
stop, they diminished and the negotiators and their families were unharmed
throughout. Developing an HIV/AIDS pilot in the Cerrejón mine was discussed in
2006 with senior AA management as the final stage in this relationship. Although
it is currently unclear whether this will succeed, it is testimony to the strength of
relationships that such a complex issue could be broached in the context.
ese negotiations brought some benefits for workers, and established a
momentum that built on these. As a result of a subsequent wave of negotiations, an
improved agreement was signed on 28 January 2007. e agreement brought salary
increases for all workers including those in ancillary jobs and holding fixed-term
contracts. e company pension scheme was opened for the first time to workers on
fixed-term contracts of longer than six months. Also for the first time the company
agreed to follow Colombian legislation by monitoring contract workers’ conditions,
and by jointly carrying out health and safety inspections within the mine with
Sintracarbón representatives. In addition, the agreement covered social issues such
as education and family benefits.
Sintracarbón’s achievements provided motivation for other unions to embark
on renewed collective bargaining. us, for example, coordinated bargaining was
CASE STUDY
110
subsequently secured in the glass sector after many years of stalling by key employer
Owens Illinois. e results of these negotiations were uneven, but overall workers’
conditions were improved in both salary and health and safety terms. In companies
where senior management had a strong relationship with the ICEM, local bargaining
was more successful than elsewhere. Ensuring the participation of local management
in most cases required direct communication between the ICEM Secretariat and
the multinational’s senior management. In these cases, they received unequivocal
instruction from international and in some cases regional management to participate
in good faith. Without this, it is unlikely that local managers would have participated
as fully as they did.
e Colombian union movement itself remains both divided and fragile although
currently the ICEM unions and their national centre, CUT, enjoy the highest level
of internal cohesion in their history. Alliances between the ICEM unions involved
have proved to be extremely strong, and they represent the most cohesive bloc within
CUT. e unions are in regular contact with each other in relation to security for
union leaders, contacts which were totally absent in the past. e CUT itself has
improved its standing nationally and internationally and is recognised as a serious
partner at both levels. All of this has provided a solid base for individual unions and
raised their confidence in their capacity to deal with multinationals.
Without the many years of educational programmes, it is unlikely that the
relationship between the ICEM and its affiliates would have developed sufficiently
strongly to sustain a difficult, complex and prolonged process of internationally
mediated negotiations. e ICEM’s direct role in preparing unions and creating
new spaces for dialogue created the only opportunity the unions had to step outside
a previously intractable dynamic of threats and local disputes. e Colombian
experience of social dialogue was consciously adopted and systematically transferred
by the ICEM to other situations such as ailand and Peru where dialogue between
unions and employers had broken down.
We have to record here the torture and murder of Adolfo González Montes, a
Sintracarbón leader at his home on 22 March 2008. Adolfo’s murder reminds us of
the continued risks faced by trade unionists in that country.
Conclusion
e GUF leveraged a ‘partnership’ approach in one part of the company’s operation
to enable a revival of distributive bargaining in another. e company was prepared
to offset the clear efficiency advantages which it won from raising workers’
participation in HIV/AIDS programmes in Africa against the costs of revived
distributive bargaining in Latin America.
e Ghana collaboration deepened relations between the international and the
company. e efficiency of company investments was raised by union involvement
THE WORK OF THE INTERNATIONALS
111
under the general education umbrella: awareness raising, peer counselling and
workplace representative education. e results for workers were also considerable,
raising participation rates in the company’s HIV/AIDS programmes while minimising
risks to individuals. In Colombia, serious political factionalism within unions in an
endemically violent situation was overcome and the GUF rebuilt dialogue with AA
and other companies. Education was used in different ways in Africa and Latin
America. In Africa, it was a mix of peer counsellor and workplace representative
education while in Latin America it took more ‘classical’ forms beginning with
representative education, and subsequently shifting to discussion of union structures
and ways of working. In both contexts education was a major factor in building
relationships, local capacity and creating the possibility of dialogue with AA. e
case shows the significance of educational work and, in its African dimension, of the
usefulness of a minilateral approach to it.
e ICEM was a major actor in its own right in the two continents that are central
to AA’s mining operations, taking initiative and mediating between the company
and national unions. e formal collective bargaining that resulted in an IFA with
Anglo Gold played a relatively minor role here. e GUF’s input was important in
taking the initiative with the AA companies and in negotiating significant safeguards
for workers, in educating them and their representatives and in generalising and
publicising the initiative beyond the company. A model was developed that the GUF
transferred elsewhere in the world.
e case illustrates the large-scale resources required to form and maintain a
relationship between a GUF and a multinational, as well as the potential rewards
for doing so. e resources issue is one factor prompting us to ask how far lessons
from the case can have wider significance, since GUFs have limited capacities to
conduct such intensive long-term work. We can only broadly estimate the case’s
wider significance here and a need exists for more case studies. In this instance, a
partnership approach was possible because of the HIV/AIDS issue, which generated
an exceptionally powerful business case for working with the GUF. Nevertheless,
broadly similar health conditions exist and concern both mining and other companies
(Gaunt, 2007). Moreover, the multinational was predisposed to regard engagement
with the GUF positively since it was reconciled to trade unionism, was operating
profitably, was accustomed to initiating collaboration with unions to reduce costs,
and senior management shared industrial relations experience with the ICEM
leadership. ese may be unusual features, but they are clearly not unique since the
company’s federal structure, concern with CSR and raising efficiency through cost
reduction are shared by many others.
As we remarked above, the study illustrates the scale of the resources required
to achieve success in constructing relationships of this type, a subject central to the
next, concluding chapter.
CASE STUDY
GLOBAL UNIONS, GLOBAL BUSINESS 113
III
Conclusion
• CHAPTER NINE •
The Political Decision
Th e internationals currently face a remarkable situation. On the one hand they
are politically unified, have high membership, and good levels of engagement
with unions. For the first time in history, they can realistically claim to
approximate to being genuinely global bodies. On the other hand, they are victims of
their own success in bringing in more affiliates since demands increase as resources
diminish, and completion of the globalisation process will intensify the problem.
ere are two competing logics at work: those of legitimacy and resources. e
logic of legitimacy demands that new, unaffiliated unions and groups of currently
unorganised workers are recruited. e logic of resources is that integrating these
into the internationals will simply deepen the financial crisis.
Without functioning internationals, supported intelligently by their affiliates,
the majority of the world’s trade unions have weak relationships and leverage with
employers. e extremely high level of international connectedness needed to develop
this leverage cannot be established through bilateral contacts. Some have been
tempted opportunistically to adopt the single-track ‘rank and file internationalism is
what counts’ line to justify the development of bilateral links rather than to sustain
and develop the internationals. But bilateralism fails to address the underlying
power dynamics both between unions, and between unions and employers. Bilateral
contacts are established, managed and funded only by a select group of unions
in rich, developed countries, and as a result are likely to reinforce existing power
imbalances. For successful internationalism to be built, these power disparities have
to be overcome.
Power disparities are lived out through the issue of resources. ere is no
alternative to increasing the resources flowing from national to international level
if the internationals are to survive, and more will be required to develop in the
directions we suggest. If unions do not make the necessary financial commitment,
the only alternative for the internationals and their affiliates is to become even more
dependent on a small group of donors for projects that they may well be unable or
unwilling to fund, or to become more reliant on employers who will exact a toll.
is dependency on external funds is already, as we showed earlier, at a dangerously
high level. Yet in a few cases unions have reduced or even ended their international
subscriptions; many others simply affiliate small numbers of members or delay
116
paying their dues. It is understandable that unions who are hard pressed and having
difficulties in assisting their members should look to economise by restricting their
payments to the internationals, but it is also a real issue in the era of globalisation.
e resources debate is becoming more public and is surfacing in conferences
rather than behind closed doors. is leaves us with, at best, opportunities to make
the political argument to union membership and executives to reinforce their
international commitments. e transfer of resources from relatively prosperous
nations’ unions to others needs to be argued for at the political level not solely as
an act of solidarity, nor as a form of protection against ‘social dumping’, but as an
investment in their futures. A unionism is assumed here that sees all unions as
interconnected workers’ organisations, the demise of which in any country weakens
the position of unions everywhere.
Which area of work should the internationals prioritise? ey have three
overlapping but distinct functions. First, they defend the existing space in which
unions operate. Second, they work to create further space. ird, they help unions
build the capacities to exploit that space, by helping unions to carry out core
and new tasks more effectively. is last function is mainly carried out through
the internationals’ educational work. We stress that we do not argue here for the
abandonment of any specific area of activity, all of which are relevant. Rather, a shift
in the balance between these areas of activity is recommended, with an even greater
emphasis being placed on education.
e first function, defending space, would be difficult to abandon or devolve, and
not simply because of the importance to trade unionists of the duty of solidarity.
e increasing worldwide tendency for the freedom of association to be attacked is
a serious issue. e internationals have a unique status as institutions that unions
can draw on when defending victimised activists at national level, which no national
union can replicate. For the ITUC, with a formal status within the ILO governing
body, this is especially relevant and the ITUC should continue to be concerned
with human rights complaints mechanisms and continue to act as the political
voice of international labour. Despite small results to date, political lobbying is an
important area, one in which the ITUC should come into its own. e real prize is
the creation of a social clause in World Trade Organisation proceedings, by linking
trade with labour standards (Ewing and Sibley, 2000). As these authors point out,
there are ‘serious political and practical problems to be overcome’ (ibid.: 39–40), but
such a clause would open many possibilities for unions at national level, improving
the possibilities for applying basic trade union rights and core labour standards
throughout corporate structures and supply chains. e ITUC has the relevant
expertise, tradition and track record in such lobbying work. e GUFs would
obviously retain some of their role in complaints by virtue of their role in monitoring
IFAs and specific rights abuses with employers, but our suggestion is for as much of
this work as possible to be devolved to the umbrella body.
CONCLUSION
117
e second function, creating space, mainly but not exclusively through
negotiating International Framework Agreements, should remain a significant area
of GUF activity since it clearly provides opportunities for unions at local level. e
way that these agreements should be conceptualised and presented to companies
should perhaps be that adopted by the IUF, i.e. as recognition agreements rather than
the more abstract framework agreements. Furthermore, they require support by
improved company networking that, as we have argued, requires a more long-term
educational approach. However, these agreements’ limitations are thrown into sharp
relief by the externalisation of much multinational employment and the explosion of
‘informal’ work, realities that appear unlikely to change greatly in the near future.
is area of work could also to some extent be devolved to different actors.
Negotiation is not currently a core competence of the internationals, since many
of their employees have relatively little in-depth experience of it. National unions,
especially those in Europe, have more expertise, but devolution to them carries a
significant risk. is has already been underlined, i.e. that some affiliates in the
developed world may use it as an opportunity to further reinforce their prominent
position in companies. Companies might try to create more space for themselves
by exploiting the increased role it gives headquarters unions. is shift, therefore,
would have to be carefully structured, policed and managed by GUFs. It might
also be possible in some circumstances to devolve the monitoring of IFAs to a new
institution that brought together the ILO, consultants and national unions, including
those outside the OECD countries.
e third function, helping unions to exploit space, is a major candidate for
expansion. Education is important to all levels of union activity, from organising
informal workers to international networking. Moreover, imbalances in democratic
participation may be addressed by the same means. Both unions and the internationals
themselves stand to benefit greatly from such an increase in participation in their
representative structures. As others have suggested (see, for example, Hannigan,
1998), the trade union movement would find labour educators only too willing to act
with them to create an effective alliance.
ere is an evident need for unions to rethink and reposition themselves,
both in relation to their national contexts and employers – that is, to carry out
transformational change. is has been particularly evident in the case of unions
from the former Soviet Union and will be similarly significant in the Middle East
and China. By ‘transformational change’ we mean involving members, aligning
unions’ structures with their missions and reallocating resources (Behrens et al.,
2004). Education is of major importance in this profound type of change. In this
context, it has two main aims. e first is to help unions to build their capacities to
organise and mobilise workers. e second aim is to aid the union’s organisational
development. Organisational development supports organising in that it encourages
unions to provide the necessary human resources, information and institutional
THE POLITICAL DECISION
118
support to carry it out. Such a perspective is at least a medium-term one and, for
some unions, it will take a sustained and determined effort to achieve tangible
results. If experience of organising approaches in the developed world teaches us
anything, it is that there are no quick fixes.
Education should clearly be adapted to the needs in particular regions. More
importantly, it should be linked directly to specific forms of experimentation
considered particularly relevant by the unions concerned. us, it might focus
on organising approaches, on the recruitment of particular types of worker or on
mobilising and working with those already recruited. is type of approach is likely
to appeal to the many unions in the world faced by large numbers of informal workers.
As argued in Chapter seven from experience of precisely these kinds of programmes,
efforts should be directed towards local, inter- and intra-regional groups of national
unions exchanging experience, allowing unions to pool experience about what works
best and under what circumstances. is would also allow unions to tap into those
creative possibilities offered by local successes in organising in certain parts of the
world.
A precondition for this approach is that unions are selected for their commitment
and capacity to carry out and sustain a programme of development. ese unions
could then act as national models for others to evaluate. ere are two further
conditions for success: first, that it is carried out by people with the requisite
expertise in international union development, and second that it is fully integrated
both into the work of the unions involved and that of the GUF itself.
A shift of responsibilities within the internationals as outlined above could
provide resources for the educational bias that is required. is could be further
assisted both by regions and groupings of countries within them, especially since
regions play a key role in securing dues payments from affiliates. Although increased
contributions from national unions are urgently needed, this will require time to
deliver and, in the interim, it will be necessary to raise funds. Regions should help
in terms of fundraising from union-sympathetic governments such as those of Brazil
and South Africa, both of which have extensive funds that unions could bid for. It
may be that in the future local and regional organisations are more able to access
funding than their international secretariats. HIV/AIDS funding, for example,
operates on a completely decentralised basis. Raising the level of active fund raising
in the regions would help to address the balance of power within the internationals
by providing the sub-regions and regions with more independent resources (Wedin,
1991). e democratising effects of education should help to ensure that these funds
are used in accountable ways.
In short, we find the emphasis developed by Levinson and adopted by many in
the international union movement today on collective bargaining as a key task for
GUFs to be misplaced. Instead, particularly given the profound informalisation of
work that is taking place, unions need to focus their resources on using education
CONCLUSION
119
and exchange of experience between trade unionists to maintain their relevance and
legitimacy as the voice of labour.
e key remaining question is how to develop structures that take serious account
of the importance of unions being able to articulate their experience and political
work to their counterparts in other countries. e ‘problem of large numbers’ (see
Chapter four) is a significant block to the level of cooperation and solidarity both
within and between unions. As Olson argued: ‘e larger the group, the less it will
further its common interest’ (Olson, 1965: 36).
Small groups operating within a multilateral structure provide the best method
of articulation between trade union memberships, GUF affiliates and global unions.
Our proposed way of working stimulates a closeness that the majority of the
internationals’ passive membership rarely experiences. Working in small groups
provides a way of making multilateralism function because these groups can build
on affiliates’ proximity and serve to facilitate exchanges and transfers of capacity
between them. e shared principles of the multilateral structures provide the
necessary sense of inclusion and common purpose in a wider enterprise to the
small groups. Cooperation within and between small groups is also relevant to the
relationships between the GUFs themselves. It is an approach that the GUFs have
recently adopted in a piecemeal fashion, but collaboration on issues of strategic
importance should become a major focus in the future.
We have tried here to bring the current state of international trade unionism, a
largely neglected dimension of globalisation, to the attention of a wider audience. e
internationals’ fragility and dependence on external resources is a problem that can
only be overcome by a range of measures, including a higher level of commitment by
unions in the developed world, particularly those from Europe, North America and
Japan. e challenge to national unions is to contribute more to the internationals in
order to secure their survival, an issue that has to be addressed with some urgency.
Simply put, the internationals’ affiliates need to make the difficult but crucial
political decision to support them with the resources they need. e global unions
are the only institutions that can develop the collective experience, articulation and
collaboration between unions in the ways demanded by globalisation.
THE POLITICAL DECISION
Annex 1: BWI Model IFA
BWI Model International Framework Agreement
Approved by BWI World Council on 16 November 2007
Building and Wood Workers’ International
To be signed between (company name) and the Building and Wood Workers’
International (BWI) to promote and protect worker’s rights.
A paragraph(s) should be inserted at the beginning of the agreement giving a
short description of the company and its operations. (“e company recognises
that corruption, bribery and unfair anti-competitive actions distort markets and
hamper economic, social and democratic development.” Should be part of the policy
statement.)
e BWI is the Global Union Federation grouping free and democratic unions
with members in the Building, Building Materials, Wood, Forestry and Allied
sectors. e BWI groups together around 350 trade unions representing around 12
million members in 135 countries. e BWI’s mission is to promote the development
of trade unions in the building and wood industries throughout the world and to
promote and enforce workers’ rights.
e agreement is based on the signatories’ joint commitment to respect basic
human and trade union rights, acknowledging the fundamental principals of human
rights as defined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the ILO Declaration
on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work as well as relevant ILO Conventions
and jurisprudence and the OECD guidelines on Multinational Companies. e
parties also commit themselves to achieving continuous improvements within
the areas of working conditions, health and safety standards at the workplace and
positive democratic industrial relations and fair collective bargaining procedures
with representative trade unions.
is agreement relates to all (company name) operations. e (company name)
will secure compliance with the principles set out in this agreement also with
its subsidiaries, contractors, subcontractors, suppliers and joint ventures. is
agreement shall not in any way reduce or undermine existing labour relations
practices or agreements relating to union rights or facilities already established by
any BWI affiliate or group of affiliates or any other union within (company name).
122
In this spirit the (company name) and the BWI shall work together to verify
the effective application by all (company name) activities and undertakings of the
following requirements.
1. Freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining are respected
All workers shall have the right to form and join trade unions of their own
choice. ese unions shall have the right to be recognised for the purpose of
collective bargaining in conformance with ILO Conventions 87 and 98. Workers’
representatives shall not be subjected to any discrimination and shall have access
to all necessary workplaces in order to carry out their duties as representatives
(ILO Convention 135 and Recommendation 143). e company shall take a positive
attitude to trade union activities, including union access to workers in the organising
process. e company will follow the most efficient process in the event that BWI
affiliate requests union recognition.
2. Employment is freely chosen
ere shall be no use of forced or compulsory labour, including bonded labour.
Workers shall not be asked to surrender passports, identity papers or valuables (ILO
Conventions 29 and 105).
3. No discrimination in employment
All workers shall have equality of opportunity and treatment regardless of their
ethnic origin, gender, religion, political opinion, nationality, social origin or other
distinguishing characteristics. Workers shall receive equal pay for work of equal
value (ILO Conventions 100 and 111). Migrating and posted employees must enjoy
at least the same conditions as the national work force.
4. Child labour is not used
Child labour shall not be used. Only workers above the age of 15 years, or over the
compulsory school-leaving age if higher, shall be employed (ILO Convention 138).
Children under the age of 18 shall not perform work which, by its nature or the
circumstances in which it is carried out, is likely to harm the health, safety or morals
of children (ILO Convention 182).
5. Living wages are paid
Workers shall be paid wages and benefits for a standard working week that will
enable them and their families to enjoy a reasonable standard of living, and which are
more favourable than the minimum conditions established by national legislation or
agreements. All workers must be provided with clear verbal and written information
about wage conditions, as well as specific information regarding every payment
period (ILO Conventions 131 Minimum Wage Fixing, 1970, C.95 Protection of
wages, 1949, C.94 Labour Clauses (Public Contracts), 1949). Deductions shall not be
made from wages unless otherwise stated in national law or collective agreements.
Information regarding pay and deductions should be provided to workers each time
ANNEX 1
123
wages are paid, and these should not be changed other than by written consent of
the individual worker or by collective agreement.
6. Hours of work are not excessive
Hours of work shall comply with appropriate national legislation, national agreements
and industry standards but in no circumstances should be unreasonable. Overtime
shall not be excessive, shall not be demanded on a regular basis and shall always be
remunerated at a premium rate. All workers shall be given a minimum of a one day
weekly rest period.
7. Health and Safety of Workers
A safe and healthy working environment shall be provided. Best occupational health
and safety practice to prevent injuries and ill health shall be promoted and shall be in
compliance with ILO Convention 155 Occupational Safety and Health Convention,
1981 and ILO Convention 167 on Safety and Health in Construction, 1988 and the
ILO Guidelines for Occupational Health Management Systems.
All workers shall also be given Personal Protective Equipment, at no cost to
themselves, and training on occupational hazards and their prevention. Workplace
Health and Safety Committees shall be established and workers shall have the right
to elect Health and Safety Representatives. Trade Unions shall be encouraged to
appoint and train Health and Safety Representatives.
Suppliers, contractors and sub-contractors shall be required to provide a site-
specific health and safety plan and to appoint a competent person to manage health
and safety and to take part in safety meetings.
8. Welfare of workers
At every work site the company shall provide an adequate supply of wholesome
drinking water; sanitary and washing facilities; facilities for changing and for storage
and drying of clothing; accommodation for taking meals and for shelter.
When workers are offered living accommodation, this shall be planned, built and
maintained to provide reasonable housing conditions. e company shall provide
health education and an HIV/AIDS awareness raising and prevention programme in
accordance with the ILO Code of Practice on HIV/AIDS and the World of Work.
9. Skills training
All workers shall have the opportunity to participate in education and training
programmes including training to improve workers skills to use new technology
and equipment.
10. e employment relationship is established
e company shall respect obligations to all workers under labour and social security
laws and regulations arising from the regular employment relationship (Social
Security Minimum Standards Convention C.102). In locations where conditions
permit, efforts shall be made to offer fixed employment opportunities. All workers
ANNEX 1
124
shall receive a written contract of employment. e company and all sub-contractors
shall, wherever practicable, directly employ all labour, and shall pay social security
and pension contributions for their workers.
IMPLEMENTATION
e (company name) will ensure that appropriate translations of the agreement are
available at all workplaces and should include suppliers and subcontractors. e
agreement will also be made public on the Company’s website and Intranet.
a) Both parties recognize that effective local monitoring of this agreement must
involve the local management, the workers and their representatives, health
and safety representatives and local trade unions.
b) To enable local and national union representatives of BWI affiliated unions
to play a role in the monitoring process, they will be given adequate time for
training and involvement in the monitoring process. e company will ensure
that they are provided with information, access to workers, and rights of
inspection necessary to effectively monitor compliance with this agreement.
c) A reference group shall be set up, composed of representatives of (Company
name), and of the concerned BWI affiliated union(s) in the home country of
the company and a BWI coordinator. It will meet at least once a year, or when
necessary, to evaluate reports on compliance and to review the implementation
of the agreement.
(company name) shall make the necessary resources available for the
implementation of the agreement.
Trade union representation should be secured in internal or external monitoring.
Monitoring or audit reports should be made available to the signing organisations.
e annual review of the present agreement shall be incorporated into (company
name) annual reporting with the consent of the signatories.
CONFLICT RESOLUTION
In the event of a complaint or an infraction of the agreement the following procedure
will normally apply:
a) Firstly, the complaint should be raised with the local site management.
b) If the complaint is not resolved with local management, it should be referred
to the appropriate national union who will raise the issue with the company.
c) Any infractions which could not be resolved through discussion at the
workplace or national level will be addressed by the BWI coordinator in close
cooperation with the BWI affiliates in the home country and will be reported
to the responsible manager, who will ensure that corrective measures are
implemented in a timely manner.
d) If the issue is not resolved, the reference group will deal with the matter and
propose appropriate action.
e) If corrective measures are not taken in a way that is satisfactory to the BWI
affiliate raising the complaint, and the BWI-affiliate and the BWI coordinator
ANNEX 1
125
participating in the reference group, the dispute shall be resolved through
binding arbitration. e arbitrator will be jointly selected by all of the members
of the reference group. All expenses for the arbitration will be the responsibility
of the Company.
f) If a dispute is not resolved and breaches continue, withdrawal from the IFA
should be a final resort.
Signatories agree that any difference arising from the interpretation or implementation
of this agreement will be examined jointly, for the purpose of clarification.
DURATION
is agreement is effective from today’s date, with a mutual three month notice of
termination.
Date and venue
(Signature Building and Wood Workers’ International, BWI)
&
(Signature company name)
ANNEX 1
Annex 2: Lafarge IFA
Agreement on corporate social responsibility and international industrial
relations signed between the Lafarge Group and the International trade union
federations IFBWW, ICEM and WFBW to promote and protect workers’ rights
e IFBWW, International Federation of Building and Wood Workers, is a Global
Union Federation organising more than 10.5 million members in 281 trade unions
in 125 countries around the world in the building, building materials, wood, forestry
and allied industries.
e ICEM, International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General
Workers’ Unions, is a Global Union Federation organising workers in the Chemical,
Energy, Mine and related Process Industries including Cement, Glass and Ceramics.
ICEM unites 425 member trade unions from 121 countries representing in total
around 20 million workers in these industries.
e WFBW, World Federation of Building and Woodworkers’ Unions, represents
1.5 million workers in the building and wood industry and who are organised in 55
unions in 41 countries all over the world.
Lafarge is the world leader in building materials, holds top-ranking positions
in all four of its Divisions: Cement, Aggregates & Concrete, Roofing and Gypsum.
Lafarge employs 77,000 people in 75 countries.
PREAMBLE
Lafarge believes that there’s a link between social and economic progress. e
interests and success of Lafarge and its employees are interdependent. Lafarge
commits itself to involve its employees directly in the Group future through an open
dialog; Lafarge recognizes that employees may choose to be represented by elected
employees and/or trade union organizations.
e Lafarge philosophy is to develop and maintain positive relationships with
its employees in accordance with the ‘Lafarge Principles of Action’: “Lafarge
responsibility is as much about complying with local and international laws and
standards as it is about aligning our actions with our values. Respect for the common
interest, openness and dialog, integrity and commitment are the main ethical
principles of the Group and of the employees”.
127
Trade unions believe that decent wages and working conditions, a meaningful job
with prospects, a safe and healthy working environment, the right to join free trade
unions and the right to collective bargaining are preconditions for good industrial
relations.
e signatories consider that this agreement is based on the joint commitment to
respect human and social rights and to achieve continuous improvement within the
areas of working conditions, industrial relations, health and safety standards in the
workplace and environmental performance.
e signatories recognize that the subsidiarity principle is a key performance
management process within the Group; therefore the signatories respect the
principle that industrial relations issues are best resolved as close as possible to the
workplaces.
Lafarge considers respect for workers’ rights to be a crucial element in sustainable
development. Lafarge will seek to use the services of those trading partners,
subcontractors and suppliers, which recognise and implement the principles listed
below.
FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES
Lafarge commits itself to comply with the International Labour Organization (ILO)
Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, the ILO Tripartite
Declaration of Principles concerning Multinational Enterprises and Social Policy,
the United Nations Global Compact and also the Organisation for Economic
Cooperation and Development Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises.
No forced labour
It is prohibited to make direct or indirect use of forced labour, including bonded
labour and involuntary prison labour (ILO Conventions 29 and 105).
No discrimination in employment
All workers, whatever their workplace, shall have equality of opportunity and
treatment regardless of their ethnic origin, colour, gender, religion, political opinion,
nationality, social origin or other distinguishing characteristics. Workers shall
receive equal pay for work of equal value (ILO Conventions 100 and 111). Migrant
and posted employees must be ensured at least the same rights and conditions as the
national workforce working in the company.
No use of child labour
It is prohibited to use child labour in any form whatsoever: only workers above the
age of 15 years, or over the compulsory school-leaving age if higher, shall be employed
(ILO Convention 138). In view of their age, children under the age of 18 shall not
perform work, which, by its nature or the circumstances in which it is carried out, is
likely to harm the health, safety or morals of children (ILO Convention 182).
ANNEX 2
128
Freedom of association and right to collective bargaining
Lafarge should uphold the freedom of association and the effective recognition of the
right to collective bargaining (ILO conventions 87 and 98).
e Lafarge Group guarantees that workers’ representatives shall not be
discriminated against (ILO Convention 135).
Living wages
Workers shall be paid wages and benefits for a standard working week that should be
at least at the level of current national legislation or collective agreements, as applied
in the industry/sector concerned. All workers must be provided with clear verbal and
written information about wage conditions in their native language.
Deductions from wages, unless permitted under national law, shall not be made
under any circumstances without the express permission of the worker concerned.
Working hours
Working hours shall comply with appropriate national legislation, national agreements
and industry/sector standards. Overtime shall not be excessive and shall always be
remunerated at a premium rate. All workers shall be given a minimum of a one day
weekly rest period.
Health, safety and working conditions
A safe and healthy working environment shall be provided (ILO Convention 155).
Best occupational health and safety practices shall be followed and shall be in
compliance with the ILO Guidelines for Occupational Health Management Systems.
All workers shall be given training on occupational hazards and shall have the means
of preventing them.
e signatories undertake to raise awareness of the HIV/AIDS problem and of the
prevention programme in compliance with the ILO HIV/AIDS code of practice.
Skills training
All workers shall have the opportunity to participate in education and training
programmes including training to improve workers’ level of skills so that they
can use new technology and equipment. Whenever possible, the Lafarge Group
in cooperation with trade unions shall develop workers’ training with a view to
improving their level of skills and ensuring that they participate in their career
development and increase their employability.
IMPLEMENTATION AND FOLLOW UP
e Lafarge Group will provide information concerning this agreement in written or
verbal form in all countries where this agreement is applicable.
All signatories are strongly committed to the most widespread dissemination
possible of the content of this agreement throughout the Lafarge operations.
A reference group consisting of representatives of the Lafarge management and
ANNEX 2
129
the signatory international federations shall meet at least once a year, or whenever
necessary, to follow up and review the implementation of this agreement.
e Lafarge Group shall make available to the reference group the resources
needed for its mission.
e annual review of the present agreement should be incorporated into the
Lafarge Group’s reporting with the consent of all signatories.
All signatories agree that any difference arising from the interpretation or
implementation of this agreement will be examined jointly, for the purpose of
making recommendations to the signatories concerned.
DURATION
is agreement shall remain in force unless otherwise agreed by any party giving
three calendar month’s notice, in writing, to the other.
e present agreement may be revised at the request of one of the signatories no
later than four years after it has been signed.
Paris, 12 September 2005
e Lafarge Group, Christian Herrault
e IFBWW, Anita Normark
e ICEM, Fred Higgs
e WFBW, Stefaan Vantourenhout
ANNEX 2
References
Abott, J. (1997) ‘Export processing zones and the developing world’, Contemporary Review,
May: 1–4.
Ananaba, W. (1979) The Trade Union Movement in Africa: Promise and performance.
London: Hurst.
Andersson, U., Forsoren, M. and Holm, U. (2007) ‘Balancing subsidiary influence in a
federative MNC: a business network view’, Journal of International Business Studies, 38:
802–18.
Anglo American (2003) Tony Traher’s speech to the AGM, 28 March.
(2007) Response to allegations made in War on Want’s ‘Anglo American—the
alternative report’ 2007. London: Anglo American.
(2008) Sir Mark Moody-Stuart’s speech to the AGM, 12 March.
Anner, M., Greer, I., Hauptmeier, M., Lillie, N. and Winchester, N. (2006) ‘The industrial
determinants of transnational solidarity: Global interunion politics in three sectors’,
European Journal of Industrial Relations, 12 (1): 7–27.
Anyemedu, K. (2000) Trade union responses to globalization: Case study on Ghana. Geneva:
ILO: Institute of Employment Studies.
Archer, C. (2001) International Organizations. London: Routledge.
Axelrod, R. and Keohane, R.O. (1986) ‘Achieving cooperation under anarchy: strategies and
institutions’, in Oye, K. (ed.), Cooperation under Anarchy. Princeton University Press.
Bales, K. (2004) Disposable People: New slavery in the global economy. Berkeley CA:
University of California Press.
Barrientos, S. (2002) ‘Mapping codes through the value chain: from researcher to detective’,
in Jenkins, R., Pearson, R. and Seyfang, G., Corporate Responsibility and Labour Rights:
Codes of Conduct in the Global Economy. London: Earthscan: 61–78.
Batliwala, S. (2002) ‘Grassroots movements as transnational actors: implications for global
civil society’, Voluntas, 13 (4): 393–409.
Bécu, O. (1966) ‘Vorwort’, in Gottfurcht, H., Die Internationale Gewerkschaftsbewegung von
den Anfang bis zur Gegenwart. Köln: Bund Verlag: 5–6.
Behrens, M., Hurd, R. and Waddington, J. (2004) ‘How does union restructuring contribute
to union revitalization?’, in Frege, C.M. and Kelly, J. (eds), Varieties of Unionism. Oxford:
Oxford University Press: 11–30.
131
Beirnaert, J. (2008) ‘A problem that transcends all boundaries’, International Union Rights,
14 (4): 3–4.
Bendiner, B. (1987) International Labour Affairs: the world trade unions and the
multinational companies. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Berger, P.L. and Godsell, B. (1988) A Future South Africa: visions, strategies and realities.
London: Westview Press.
Bidoli, M. (2004) ‘Beyond the bottom line’, Financial Mail (South Africa), 7 May.
Blowfield, M. and Frynas, J.G. (2005) ‘Setting new agendas: Critical perspectives on CSR in
the Developing World’, International Affairs, 81 (3): 499–513.
Blyth, A. (2003) ‘Corporate responsibility at Danone’, Ethical Business, 17 December.
Bognanno, M.F., Keane, M.P. and Yang, D. (2005) ‘The influence of wages and industrial
relations environments on the production location decisions of US Multi National
Corporations’, Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 58: 171–200.
Bonner, C. (2006) Organising informal transport workers: Global Research project. London:
ITF.
Buckley, P.J. (2000) Multinational firms, cooperation and competition in the world economy.
Basingstoke: Macmillan.
Bundesinstitut fűr Arbeit (1993 and 2007) Arbeitnehmerűberlassungssatistik. Berlin: BfA.
Burke, L. (1996) ‘How Corporate Social Responsibility pays off’, Long Range Planning, 29:
495–502.
Busch, G.K. (1983) The political role of international trades unions. London: Macmillan
Press.
Buschak, W. (2002) Edo Fimmen: Der schöne Traum von Europa und die Globalisierung.
Eine Biografie. Essen: Klartext Verlag.
(2003) ‘The European Trade Union Confederation and the European Industry
Federations’, in FES, European Trade Union Organisations: Inventory of the Archive of
Social Democracy and the Archive of the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung. Bonn: published on
behalf of the FES by Optenhögel, U., Schneider, M. and Zimmerman, R.: 9–19.
Business Action in Africa (2007) Business and HIV/AIDS: what we have learnt. London:
Business Action in Africa.
BWI (2004) BWI experiences with Global Company Agreement. Brussels: BWI. European
Industrial Relations Observatory On Line.
Caldwell, P. (1998) ‘Labour Education and New Unionism in the UK: The Case of UNISON’.
Paper to UCLA/AFL-CIO Education Conference, Los Angeles, 30 April – 2 May.
Carew, A. (1987) Labour Under the Marshall Plan: the politics of productivity and the
marketing of management science. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
(2000) ‘Towards a free trade union centre: The International Confederation of Free
Trade Unions (1949–1972)’, in Carew, A., Dreyfus, M., Van Goethem, G., Gumbrell-
McCormick, R. and van der Linden, M. (eds), The International Confederation of Free
Trade Unions. Berne: Peter Lang: 187–337.
(2007) ‘The Trades Union Congress in the international labour movement’, in
REFERENCES
132
Campbell, A., Fishman, N. and McIlroy, J., The Post-War compromise: British trade
unions and industrial politics 1945–64. Monmouth: Merlin Press: 145–67.
Carling, A. (ed.) (2006) Globalization and Identity. London: I.B. Tauris.
Chaison, G. (1996) Union Mergers in Hard Times. Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press.
Charoenloet, V., Ativanichayapong, N. and Wanabriboon, P. (2004) The Impact of Trade
Union Solidarity Support Organisations in Thailand 1993–2002. Bonn: Friedrich Ebert
Stiftung.
Chen, M.A. (2007) Re-thinking the informal economy: linkages with the formal economy and
the formal regulatory environment. New York: United Nations Department for Economic
and Social Affairs, working paper 46.
CISL [Conféderation international des syndicats libres] (1972) La fonction syndicale au
course des années 70. Brussels: CISL.
Clark, P.F., Gilbert, K., Gray, L.S. and Solomon, N. (1998) Union administrative practices: a
comparative analysis. Ithaca NY: DigitalCommons@ILR, Cornell University.
Clarke, S. (2007) ‘The State of the Russian Unions’, Journal of Labor Research, 18 (2): 275–
99.
Collins, H. and Abramsky, C. (1965) Karl Marx and the British Labour Movement: Years of
the First International. London: Macmillan.
Cooke, W.N. (1997) ‘The influence of industrial relations factors on US direct investment
abroad’, Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 51: 3–17.
Croucher, R. (2003) ‘African Labour’, Historical Studies in Industrial Relations, 13: 95–112.
(2004) ‘The impact of trade union education: a study from three countries in
Eastern Europe’, European Journal of Industrial Relations, 10 (1): 90–109.
Croucher, R. and Halstead, J. (1990) ‘The origin of “Liberal” adult education for miners
at Sheffield in the post-war period: A study in adult education and the working class’,
Trade Union Studies Journal, 21: 3–14.
Croucher, R. and Singe, I. (2004) ‘Co-determination and working time accounts in the
German finance industry’, Industrial Relations Journal, 35 (2):153–68.
Croucher, R., Tyson, S. and Wild, A. (2006) ‘“Peak” Employers’ Organisations: International
attempts at transferring experience’, Economic and Industrial Democracy, 27 (3): 469–
90.
Dempsey, M. (2004) Managing trade unions. A case study examination of managerial
activities in four UK trade unions formed by merger. Unpublished PhD thesis, Cranfield
University.
Dølvik, J.E. (1997) ‘EWCs and the implications for Europeanisation of collective bargaining’,
in Dølvik, J.E. (ed.), Re-drawing the boundaries of solidarity? ETUC, social dialogue and
the Europeanisation of trade unions in the 1990s. Oslo: Arena/FAFO: 381–91.
Douzinas, C. (2000) The End of Human Rights. Oxford: Hart Publishing.
Dreyfus, M. (2000) ‘The emergence of an international trade union organization’, in Carew,
A., Dreyfus, M., Van Goethem, G., Gumbrell-McCormick, R. and van der Linden, M.
(eds), The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions. Berne: Peter Lang: 25–68.
REFERENCES
133
Eder, M. (2002) ‘The constraints on labour internationalism’, in Harrod, J. and O’Brien, R.
(eds), Global Unions? Theory and strategies of organized labour in the global political
economy. London: Routledge: 167–84.
Edwards, M. (2001) NGO Rights and Responsibilities: a new deal for global governance.
London: Foreign Policy Centre.
Elliott, K.A. and Freeman, R.B. (2003) Can Labor Standards Improve Under Globalization?
Washington: Institute for International Economics.
Erne, R. (2006) ‘European trade union strategies: between technocratic efficiency and
democratic legitimacy’, in Smisman, S. (ed.), Civil Society and Legitimate European
Governance. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar: 219–40.
(2008) European Unions: Labor’s quest for a transnational democracy. Ithaca NY:
Cornell University Press.
European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (2003)
EWC Case Study: Daimler Chrysler Group. http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/areas/
participationatwork/ewccasestudies.htm (Accessed 15 August 2008).
Ewing, K.D. and Sibley, T. (2000) International Trade Union Rights for the New Millennium.
London: Institute of Employment Rights.
Fairbrother, P. and Hammer, N. (2005) ‘Global unions: Past efforts and future prospects’,
Relations Industrielles/Industrial Relations, 60 (3): 405–31.
Fairbrother, P., Williams, G., Barton, R.R., Gibellieri, E. and Tropeoli, A. (2007) ‘Unions
facing the future: Questions and possibilities’, Labour Studies Journal, 31 (4): 31–53.
Feidel-Mertz, H. (1964) Zur Ideologie der Arbeiterbildung. Frankfurt: EVA.
Fenton O’Creevy, M., Cerdin, J.-C. and Gooderham, P. (2007) ‘Lost in translation?
Developing the skills of knowledge-sharing within multinational corporations’
Symposium paper, ‘the development of social capital for knowledge-sharing purposes in
MNCs’ Academy of Management Conference, Philadelphia, 6 August.
Fichter, M. and Sydow, J. (2002) ‘Using networks towards Global Labour Standards?
Organising social responsibility in Global Production Chains’, Industrielle Beziehungen,
9 (4): 357–80.
Fimmen, E. (1922) The International Federation of Trade Unions: Its development and aims.
Publications of the International Federation of Trade Unions, 1.
(1924) Labour’s Alternative: The United States of Europe or Europe Limited.
London: Labour Publishing Company.
Flanagan, R.J. (2006) ‘Multinational corporations and labour conditions’, Globalization and
labour conditions. Oxford scholarship online monograph.
Frazer, G. (2008) ‘Industrial Relations in Ghana’, in Wood, G. and Brewster, C. (eds),
Industrial Relations in Africa. Basingstoke: Palgrave: 182–97.
Freeman, R.B. and Medoff, J.L. (1984) What Unions Do. New York: Basic Books.
Freire, P. (1970) The Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: The Continuum Publishing
Company.
Galbraith, J.K. (1983) An Anatomy of Power. New York: Houghton Mifflin.
REFERENCES
134
Gallin, D. (1997) Funeral oration for Charles Levinson, January 26, 1997. Geneva: Global
Labour Institute, www.global-labour.org.
Garver, P., Buketov, K., Chong, H. and Sosa Martinez, B. (2007) ‘Global labor organizing in
theory and practice’, Labour Studies Journal, 32: 236–56.
Gaunt, R. (2007) Making disease management pay. London: International Council on
mining and metals.
Gills, B.K. (2000) Globalization and the Politics of Resistance. New York: St Martin’s Press.
Glyn, A. (2006) Capitalism unleashed: Finance, globalization and welfare. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Gooderham, P., Nordhaug, O. and Ringdal, K. (1999) ‘Institutional and Rational
Determinants of Organizational Practices: Human Resource Management in European
Firms’, Administrative Science Quarterly, 44: 507–31.
(2006) ‘National Embeddedness and Calculative Human Resource Management in
US Subsidiaries in Europe and Australia’, Human Relations, 59 (11): 1,491–513.
Gottfurcht, H. (1962) Die internationale Gewerkschaftsbewegung im Weltgeschehen:
Geschichte, Probleme, Aufgaben. Köln: Bund Verlag.
(1966) Die internationale Gewerkschaftsbewegung von den Anfängen bis zur
Gegenwart. Köln: Bund Verlag.
Graham, E.M. (2000) Fighting the wrong enemy: Antiglobal activists and Multinational
enterprises. Washington DC: Institute for International Economics.
Greenfield, G. and Rossman, P. (2006) ‘Financialization: New routes to profit, new
challenges for trade unions’, Labour Education, 2006/1, 142: 55–62.
Greenfield, G. (2006) ‘The impact of financialization on transnational production systems:
The role of new financial imperatives in the restructuring strategies of Nestlé, Kraft
and Unilever’. Paper delivered to the International Workshop ‘The impact of global
production systems on trade union strategies’, 10–11 May, Institute of Social Studies,
The Hague, Netherlands.
Greven, T. (2003) ‘Organische Solidarität und transnationale Kampagnen’, in
Croucher, R., Kruse, W., Martens, H., Singe, I. and Tech, D. (eds), Transnationale
Gewerkschaftskooperationen-Erfahrungen und Forschungsfragen. Dortmund:
Sozialforschungstelle: Beiträge aus der Forschung, Band 138: 92–104.
(2006) ‘US strategic campaigns against Trans National Enterprises in Germany’,
Industrielle Beziehungen, 13 (3): 1–17.
(2008) ‘United Steelworkers versus Continental AG: Transatlantic strategic
campaigns’, in Etges, A. (ed.), Amerika und Europa. Münster: Lit Verlag: 1–19.
Grindling, T.H. and Terrell, K. (2005) ‘The effect of minimum wages on actual wages in
formal and informal sectors in Costa Rica’, World Development, 33 (11): 1,905–21.
Guliy, M. (2008) Final project report on the Five GUFs project. Moscow: IUF/ICEM/BWI/
ITF/UNI.
Gumbrell-McCormick, R.A. (2000a) ‘Facing New Challenges’, in Carew, A., Dreyfus, M.,
Van Goethem, G., Gumbrell-McCormick, R.A. and van der Linden, M. (eds), The
REFERENCES
135
International Confederation of Free Trade Unions. Berne: Peter Lang: 343–515.
(2000b) ‘Globalisme et Régionalisme’, in Fouquet, A., Rehfeldt, U. and Le Roux, S.
(eds), Le Syndicalisme dans la Mondialisation. Paris: les Editions de l’Atelier: 43–53.
(2001) The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions: structure, ideology
and capacity to act. Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Warwick.
(2002) The ICFTU and Trade Unions in the Developing Countries: Solidarity or
Dependence. London: Birkbeck College, University of London.
(2004) ‘The ICFTU and the World Economy: A Historical Perspective’, in
Munck, R. (ed.), Labour and Globalisation: Results and Prospects. Liverpool: Liverpool
University Press: 34–51.
Hagglund, G. (2007) ‘The development of industrial relations in Kenya’, in Wood, G. and
Brewster, C., Industrial Relations in Africa. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan: 28–38.
Hall, D. (2008) Private Equity and employment: The Davos/WEF/Harvard study. http://
www.psiru.org (Accessed 15 August 2008).
Hammer, N. (2005) ‘International Framework Agreements: global industrial relations
between rights and bargaining’, Transfer, 11 (4): 511–30.
Handley, A. (2005) ‘Business, government and economic policy making in the new South
Africa, 1990–2000’, Journal of Modern African Studies, 43: 211–39.
Hannigan, T.A. (1998) Managing Tomorrow’s High-Performance Unions. Westport CT:
Quorum Books.
Harcourt, M., Wood, G. and Harcourt, S. (2004) ‘Do unions affect employer compliance
with the law?’, British Journal of Industrial Relations, 42 (3): 527–41.
Herod, A. (2001) Labor Geographies: workers and the landscapes of capitalism. New York:
Guildford Press.
Hirst, P. and Thompson, G. (2002) ‘The future of globalization’, Co-operation and Conf lict,
37 (8): 247–65.
Hoffmann, A. (2005) The construction of solidarity in a German Central Works Council:
Implications for European Works Councils. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of
Warwick.
Hogan, M.J. (1989) The Marshall Plan: America, Britain and the reconstruction of Western
Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Holdcroft, J. (2006) ‘International Framework Agreements: A Progress Report’, Metalworld,
3: 18–22.
Husted, B.W. (2003) ‘Governance Choices for Corporate Social Responsibility: to contribute,
collaborate or internalize’, Long Range Planning, 36: 481–98.
Huzzard, T. (2000) Labouring to learn: union renewal in Swedish manufacturing. Umeå:
Boréa.
Hyman, R. (2002) ‘The international labour movement on the threshold of two centuries:
Agitation, organisation, bureaucracy, diplomacy’. http://www.arbarkiv.nu/pdf_wri/
Hyman_int.pdf (Accessed 15 August 2008).
ICEM (2003) ‘Report of the Finance Sub Committee 2003’. Brussels: International
REFERENCES
136
Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers’ Unions.
(2004a) Contract/Agency Labour: A threat to our social standards. Brussels:
International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers’ Unions.
(2004b) Presidium Report 2004. Brussels: International Federation of Chemical,
Energy, Mine and General Workers’ Unions.
(2004c) Finance and Restructuring Document 2004. Brussels: International
Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers’ Unions.
ICFTU (1978) The ICFTU Development Charter 1978. Brussels: International Confederation
of Free Trade Unions.
(1990) The Challenge of internationalization: a background document for the
ICFTU/ITS Conference on Trade Unions and the Transnationals, 25–28 March 1990.
Elsinore, Denmark. Brussels: International Confederation of Free Trade Unions.
(2000) Report: 1st Meeting of the Progress Group September 2000. Brussels:
International Confederation of Free Trade Unions.
(2001a) Transforming the Global Economy: Report from the Global Economy
Reference Group of the Millennium Project. Brussels: International Confederation of Free
Trade Unions.
(2001b) International Trade Union Strategies in Dealing with Companies and other
Employers. Brussels: International Confederation of Free Trade Unions.
(2001c) Report: 3rd Meeting of the Millennium Review Progress Group. Brussels:
International Confederation of Free Trade Unions.
(2001d) Report of the Progress Group November 2001. Brussels: International
Confederation of Free Trade Unions.
(2001e) Background Report to the 117th meeting of the ICFTU Executive Board.
Brussels: International Confederation of Free Trade Unions.
(2001f) International Trade Union Organisation Resources and Services. Brussels:
International Confederation of Free Trade Unions.
(2001g) Strengthening National Trade Unions Research Paper. Brussels:
International Confederation of Free Trade Unions.
(2001h) The Future of the International Trade Union Movement. Congress
statement. Brussels: International Confederation of Free Trade Unions.
(2003) Export Processing Zones—symbols of exploitation and a development dead-
end. Brussels: International Confederation of Free Trade Unions.
(2004) Financial Reports. Presented to the Eighteenth World Congress, Miyazaki,
5–10 December. Brussels: International Confederation of Free Trade Unions.
(2006) Fighting for Alternatives. Cases of successful trade union resistance to the
policies of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. Brussels: International
Confederation of Free Trade Unions in co-operation with the Global Union Research
Network.
ILO (2003) Information note on corporate social responsibility and international labour
standards. Geneva: ILO.
REFERENCES
137
(2007) The Employment Relationship: an annotated guide to the ILO
Recommendation 198. Geneva: ILO.
IMF (1942) Minutes of the IMF British Section Annual Meeting, 14 August. MRC: MSS 36/
IMF/4. Geneva: IMF.
(1944) Minutes of IMF British Section Annual Meeting, 12 October. MRC 159/1/16.
Geneva: IMF.
(2004) Conclusions of the IMF World Auto Council Dearborn USA. Geneva: IMF.
ITUC (2004) ITUC 18th World Congress 2004: Report on Activities and Financial Reports.
Brussels: International Trade Union Confederation.
IUF (2007) A Workers’ Guide to Private Equity Buyouts. Geneva: IUF.
Jones, G. (ed.) (1993) Transnational Corporations: A historical perspective. London:
Routledge.
Kahler, M. (1992) ‘Multilateralism with small and large numbers’, International
Organization, 46 (3): 681–708.
Kenny, B. (2004) ‘The “Market Hegemonic” workplace order in food retailing’, in Webster,
E. and von Holdt, K. (eds), Beyond the Apartheid Workplace: Studies in Transition.
Scottsville: University of Kwa Zulu Natal Press: 217–41.
Khaliy, I. (2005) The effects of foreign-funded trade union education in Russia. Moscow:
Academy of Sciences.
Kirk, N. (2003) Comrades and cousins: Globalization, workers and labour movements in
Britain, the USA and Australia from the 1880s to 1914. London: Merlin Press.
Kirton, G. and Healy, G. (2004) ‘Shaping union and gender identities: a case study of
women-only trade union courses’, British Journal of Industrial Relations, 42 (2): 303–23.
Koch-Baumgarten, S. (1997) ‘Spionage für Mitbestimmung: die Kooperation der
Internationalen Transportarbeiterföderation mit allierten secret services im Zweiten
Weltkrieg als korporatistiches Tauscharrangement’, Internationale Wissenschaftliche
Korrespondenz zur Geschichte der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung, 33: 361–90.
(1998) ‘Trade union regime formation under the conditions of globalization in the
transport sector: attempts at transnational trade union regulation of flag-of-convenience
shipping’, International Review of Social History, 43 (3): 369–402.
Koftas, J.B. (2002) ‘US foreign policy and the World Federation of Trade Unions, 1944–
1948’, Diplomatic History, 26 (1): 26–40.
Köhler, G. (2003) ‘Foreign direct investment and its employment opportunities in
perspective: meeting the great expectations of developing countries?’, in Cooke, W.N.
(ed.), Multi-National Companies and Global Human Resource Strategies. Westport CT:
Greenwood Press: 21–42.
Köhnen, H. and Glaubitz, J. (2000) ‘Wal-Mart: ein Wolf im Schafspelz?’, Die Mitbestimmung,
6: 58–9.
Kratochwil, F. (1993) ‘Norms versus numbers: multilateralism and the rationalist and
reflexivist approaches to institutions – a unilateral plea for communicative rationality’
REFERENCES
138
in Ruggie, J. (ed.), Multilateralism matters: The theory and praxis of an institutional
form. New York: Columbia University Press: 443–74.
Kristensen, P.H. and Zeitlin, J. (2005) Local Players in Global Games: the Strategic
Constitution of a Multinational Corporation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lecher, W., Platzer, H.-W., Fulton, L., Jaich, R., Rehfeldt, U., Rüb, S., Telljohahn, V. and
Weiner, K.P. (1999) The establishment of European Works Councils: from information
committee to social actor. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Levinson, C. (1972) International Trade Unionism. Chicago IL: Aldine Publishing.
Lewis, H. (2003) The International Transport Workers’ Federation 1945–1965: An
organizational and political anatomy. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Warwick.
Lieβ, O.R. (1983) ‘Weltgewerkschaftsbund’, in Mielke, S., Internationales Gewerkschafts
Handbuch. Opladen: Leske und Budrich: 10–20.
Lillie, N. (2004) ‘Global collective bargaining on Flag of Convenience shipping’, British
Journal of Industrial Relations, 42 (1): 47–67.
Lim, H. (2005) The Social Clause: issues and challenges. Geneva: ILO/ACTRAV.
Logue, J. (1980) Toward a Theory of Trade Union Internationalism. Gothenburg: University
of Gothenburg.
Lorwin, L.L. (1953) The International Labor Movement: History, Policies, Outlook. New
York: Harper & Brothers.
Lourenço-Lindell, I. (2002) Walking the tight rope: informal livelihoods and social networks
in a West African city. Stockholm: Stockholm University.
Loveman, M. (1998) ‘High risk collective action: defending human rights in Chile, Uruguay
and Argentina’, American Journal of Sociology, 104 (2): 477–525.
Lowell, B.L. (2007) Trends in international migration and stocks, 1975–2005. Social
Employment and Migration working paper 58. Paris: OECD.
Lukes, S. (2002) Power: A Radical View. London: Palgrave MacMillan.
Margolies, K. (2008) ‘Invisible no more: the role of training and education in increasing
activism of Chinese healthcare workers in Local 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers
East’, Labor Studies Journal, 33: 81–92.
Martinez-Lucio, M. and Weston, S. (2004) ‘European Works Councils—Structures and
strategies in the New Europe’, in Fitzgerald, I. and Stirling, J. (eds), European Works
Councils—pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will. London: Routledge: 34–47.
McIlroy, J. (2008) ‘Ten years of New Labour: workplace learning, social partnership and
union revitalization in Britain’, British Journal of Industrial Relations, 46 (2): 283–313.
McShane, D. (1992) International Labour and the Origins of the Cold War. Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
Miller, D. (2004) ‘The limits and possibilities of European Works Councils in the context of
globalisation’, in Fitzgerald, I. and Stirling, J. (eds), European Works Councils—pessimism
of the intellect, optimism of the will. London: Routledge: 198–210.
(2005) ‘Preparing for the Long Haul: Negotiating International Framework
REFERENCES
139
Agreements in the Global Textile, Garment and Footwear Sector’, Global Social Policy, 4
(2): 215–39.
Miller, D., Tully, B. and Fitzgerald, I. (2000) ‘The politics of language and European works
councils. Towards a research agenda’, European Journal of Industrial Relations, 6 (3):
307–23.
Mondi (2007) Annual reports and accounts 2007. Gauteng: Mondi Group.
Moody, K. (1997) Workers in a Lean World: Unions in the International Economy. London:
Verso.
Moon, S.S. (2006) ‘Betwixt and Between Law and Practices: South Korean Women in the
Workplace’, Asian Program Special Report, 132: 6–13. http://www.wilsoncenter.org/
topics/pubs/FinalPDF132.pdf (Accessed 15 August 2008).
Morgan, G. and Kristensen, P.H. (2006) ‘The contested space of multinationals: varieties of
institutionalism, varieties of capitalism’, Human Relations, 59 (11): 1,467–90.
Mosley, L. and Uno, S. (2007) ‘Racing to the bottom or climbing to the top? Economic
globalization and collective labor rights’, Comparative Political Studies, 40 (8): 923–48.
Munck, R. (ed.) (2004) Labour and Globalisation: Results and Prospects, Liverpool:
Liverpool University Press.
Müller, T. and Rüb, S. (2002) ‘Volkswagen and SKF: two routes to global works councils’,
European Works Council Bulletin, 42: 12–6.
(2005) Towards Internationalisation of Labour Relations? Fachhochschule Fulda,
Bonn: Friedrich Ebert Foundation.
N’Deba, L. and Hodges-Aeberhard, J. (1998) HIV/AIDS and Employment. Geneva: ILO.
Neuhaus, R. (1981) International Trade Secretariats: Objectives, Organisation, Activities.
Bonn: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung.
Northrup, H.R. and Rowan, R.C. (1983a) The International Transport Workers’ Federation
and Flag of Convenience Shipping. Pennsylvania PA: Pennsylvania University Press.
(1983b) Multinational Collective Bargaining Attempts. Pennsylvania PA:
Pennsylvania University Press.
O’Brien, R. (2000) ‘Workers and world order: the tentative transformation of the
international union movement’, Review of International Studies, 26: 533–55.
Odell, P.R. (1968) ‘Oil and politics in Latin America’, in Veliz, C. (ed.), Latin America and
the Caribbean: A Handbook. London: Anthony Blond: 652–55.
Olmsted, M.S. (1959) The Small Group. New York: Random House.
Olson, M. (1965) The Logic of Collective Action. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.
Orhangazi, O. (2007) ‘Financialization and Capital Accumulation in the non-Financial
Corporate Sector: A theoretical and empirical investigation of the U.S. Economy:
1973–2003’, PERI Working Paper Series 149. Amherst MASS: PERI, University of
Massachusetts Amherst.
Otobo, A. (2007) ‘Contemporary industrial relations in Nigeria’, in Wood, G. and Brewster,
C. (eds), Industrial Relations in Africa. Basingstoke: Palgrave: 162–81.
Oye, K.A. (1986) ‘Explaining Cooperation under Anarchy: Hypotheses and Strategies’ in
REFERENCES
140
Oye, K.A. (ed.), Cooperation Under Anarchy. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.
Park, S. (1983) ‘Japan’, in Mielke, S., Internationales Gewerkschafts Handbuch. Opladen:
Leske und Budrich: 621–43.
Pasture, P. (1999) Histoire du syndicalisme chrétien international. La difficile recherche
d’une troisième voie. Paris: L’Harmattan.
Pasture, P. and Verberekmoes, J. (1998) ‘Working-Class Internationalism and the Appeal
of National Identity: Historical Dilemmas and Current Debates in Western Europe’
in Pasture, P. and Verberekmoes, J. (eds), Working-class internationalism and the
appeal of national identity: historical debates and current perspectives. Oxford: Oxford
International Publishers.
Pearce, J. (2004) Beyond the perimeter fence: oil and armed conf lict in Casanare, Colombia.
Discussion paper 32. London: Centre for the Study of Global Governance, London
School of Economics.
Rehfeldt, U. (1993) ‘Les syndicats européens face à la transnationalisation des entreprises’, Le
Mouvement Social, janvier-mars: 69–94.
Reinalda, B. (ed.) (1997) The international transport workers’ federation 1914–1945: the Edo
Fimmen Era. Amsterdam: Stichtung beheer IISG.
Reufter, W. and Rutters, P. (2002) ‘International trade union organizations women’s policy’,
Economic and Industrial Democracy, 23 (1): 35–58.
Robert, J.-L., Prost, A. and Wrigley, C. (2004) The emergence of European trade unionism.
Aldershot: Ashgate.
Rogari, S. (2000) Sindacati e impreditori: le relazioni industriale in Italia dalla caduta del
Fascismo ad oggi. Firenze: le Monnier.
Rossman, P. and Greenfield, G. (2006) Financialization: new routes for profit, new challenges
for trade unions. Labor Education 1/2006, no. 142. Turin: ACTRAV.
Royle, A. (2005) ‘The union recognition dispute at McDonald’s Moscow food-processing
plant’, Industrial Relations Journal, 36 (4): 318–32.
(2006) Working for McDonald’s in Europe: the unequal struggle? London: Taylor
and Francis.
Rüb, S. (2004) Can trade unions square up to the power of transnational companies?:
Development of the global trade union network within the Nestlé corporation. Bonn:
Friedrich Ebert Foundation.
Ruggie, J.G. (1993) ‘Multilateralism: The Anatomy of an Institution’, in Ruggie, J.G. (ed.),
Multilateralism matters: The theory and praxis of an institutional form. New York:
Columbia University Press: 3–48.
(1998) Constructing the World Polity: Essays on international institutionalization.
London: Routledge.
Rugman, A.M. (2001) ‘The illusion of the global company’, London: Financial Times, 6
January.
Russo, J. (1999) ‘Strategic campaigns and international collective bargaining: the case of the
IBT, FIET and Royal Ahold NV’, Labor Studies Journal, 24: 23–37.
REFERENCES
141
Rütters, P. (2001) “...I believe that I did just about the most I was capable of doing in this
period with the means available...” – An Interview with Dan Gallin. Geneva: Global
Labour Institute.
Schömann, I., Sobczak, A., Voss, E. and Wilke, P. (2008) Codes of Conduct and International
Framework Agreements: new forms of governance at company level. Dublin: European
Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions.
Schwass, H. (2004) Global Unions and their Regional Structures. Bonn: Friedrich Ebert
Foundation.
Sewell, W.H. (2008) ‘The temporalities of capitalism’, Socio-Economic Review, 6 (3): 517–37.
Silver, B. (2003) Forces of Labour: Workers’ Movements and Globalization since 1870.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Simon, H. (1983) Organised labour against National Socialism: a case study of the
International Transport Workers’ Federation. Unpublished MA dissertation, University
of Warwick.
Singe, I. and Croucher, R. (2004) ‘US Multinationals and the German Industrial Relations
system’, Management Revue, 16 (1): 123–37.
Snidal, D. (1986) ‘The Game Theory of International Politics’ in Oye, K.A. (ed.), Cooperation
Under Anarchy. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.
Sogge, D. (2004) Turning the problem around: FNV Mondiaal in Eastern Europe and the
Soviet Union. Amsterdam: Report for the Netherlands Ministry for Foreign Affairs and
FNV Mondiaal.
Southall, R. (1995) Imperialism or Solidarity: International Labour and South African Trade
Unions. Capetown: University of Capetown.
Spencer, B. (ed.) (2002) Unions and Learning in a Global Economy: International and
Comparative Perspectives. Toronto: Thompson Educational Publishing.
Stiglitz, J. (2000) ‘Democratic development as the fruits of labour’. Keynote address to the
International Industrial Relations Congress, Boston, January.
Stone, R.W. (2004) ‘The political economy of IMF lending in Africa’, American Political
Science Review, 98 (4): 577–92.
Taylor, M. (1987) The possibility of cooperation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Thelen, K. (2006) How institutions evolve. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Theron, J. (2005) ‘Employment is not what it used to be: the nature and impact of work
re-structuring in South Africa’, in von Holdt, K. and Webster, E. (eds), Beyond the
apartheid workplace: Studies in Transition. Scottsville: University of Kwa Zulu Natal
Press: 293–316.
Thomson, D. and Larson, R. (1978) Where were you brother? An account of trade union
imperialism. London: War on Want.
Thorpe, V. and Mather, C. (2005) ITGLWF ‘Targeting Multinationals’ Project Assessment.
Brussels: ITGLWF.
Tosstorff, R. (2004) Die Rote Gewerkschaftsinternationale, 1920–1937. Paderborn: Ferdinand
Schoeningen.
REFERENCES
142
(2005) ‘The international trade union movement and the founding of the
International Labour Organization’, International Review of Social History, 50 (3): 399–
433.
Toye, R. (2003) ‘The imperial preference system and the creation of the GATT’, English
Historical Review, 118 (478): 912–39.
Traub-Merz, R. and Eckl, J. (2007) International trade union movement: mergers and
contradictions. Briefing paper 1. Bonn: Friedrich Ebert Foundation International Trade
Union Co-Operation.
Tudyka, K.P. (1983) ‘Internationaler Bund Freier Gewerkschaften’, in Mielke, S. (ed.),
Internationales Gewerkschafts Handbuch. Opladen: Leske und Budrich: 3–9.
Turner, T., D’Art, D. and Gunnigle, P. (2002) ‘Multinational Corporations: A Challenge to
European Trade Unions’, Irish Journal of Management, 23 (1): 125–41.
UNCTAD (2008) Development and Globalization: Facts and Figures. New York: United
Nations Conference on Trade and Development.
UNDP (2008) Making the law work for everyone: Report of the Commission on Legal
Empowerment of the Poor. New York: United Nations Development Programme.
Upchurch, M. (2008) ‘The organisation of work’, in Muller-Camen, M., Croucher, R. and
Leigh, S. (eds), HRM: A case study approach. London: CIPD publishing: 395–414.
Van der Linden, M. (2000) ‘Conclusion: the past and future of international trade unionism’,
in Carew, A., Dreyfus, M., Van Goethem, G., Gumbrell-McCormick, R. and van der
Linden, M. (eds), The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions. Berne: Peter
Lang: 519–42.
Van Goethem, G. (2000) ‘Conflicting interests: the International Federation of Trade Unions
(1919–1945)’, in Carew, A., Dreyfus, M., Van Goethem, G., Gumbrell-McCormick, R.
and van der Linden, M. (eds), The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions.
Berne: Peter Lang: 73–163.
(2006) The Amsterdam International: The world of the International Federation of
Trade Unions 1913–1945. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Verma, A. and Kochan, T.A. (eds) (2004) Unions in the Twenty First Century: An
international perspective. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Von Holdt, K. (2004) ‘Political transition and the changing workplace order in a South
African steelworks’, in Webster, E. and von Holdt, K. (eds), Beyond the Apartheid
Workplace: Studies in Transition. Scottsville: University of Kwa Zulu Natal Press: 45–72.
Von Holdt, K. and Webster, E. (eds) (2005) Beyond the apartheid workplace: Studies in
Transition. Scottsville: University of Kwa Zulu Natal Press.
Vuckvic, M., Mistry, N., Beckmann, S., Lavollay, M. and Girrback, E. (2005) Making Co-
Investment a Reality: Strategies and Experience. Geneva: GTZ/GBC.
War on Want (2007) Anglo American: The alternative report. London: War on Want.
Weait, M. (2007) Intimacy and Responsibility: The Criminalisation of HIV Transmission.
London: Routledge Cavendish.
REFERENCES
143
Wedin, Å. (1991) La ‘Solidaridad’ sindical internacional y sus Victimas. Estocolmo: Instituto
de Estudios Latinoamericanos.
Weichselbaumer, D. and Winter-Ebner, R. (2003) ‘A meta-analysis of the international
gender pay gap’, Reihe Őkonomie, Vienna: Institute for Advanced Studies: 135–55.
Western, B. (1997) Between class and market: post-war unionization. Princeton NJ:
Princeton University Press.
Westney, D.E. (2008) ‘Challenging the Trans National Model’, Socio-Economic Review, 6 (2):
390–94.
White, A. (2006) Making a World of Difference: Global Unions at Work. Belgium:
International Federation of Journalists.
Wick, I. (2004) Workers’ tool or PR ploy? A guide to codes of international labour practice.
Bonn: Friedrich Ebert Foundation.
Wilkins, M. (1974) The making of multinational enterprise. Cambridge MA: Harvard
University Press.
Wills, J. (2002) ‘Bargaining for the space to organise in the global economy: A review of
the Accor-IUF union rights agreement’, Review of International Political Economy, 9:
675–700.
(2004) ‘Organising in the global economy: the Accor-IUF trade union rights
agreement’, in Fitzgerald, I. and Stirling, J. (eds), European Works Councils—pessimism
of the intellect, optimism of the will. London: Routledge: 211–23.
Windmuller, J.P. (1954) American labor and the International labor movement. Ithaca NY:
Cornell University Press.
Wood, G. and Brewster, C. (eds) (2007) Industrial Relations in Africa. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Wood, G. and Frynas, J.G. (2006) ‘The institutional basis of economic failure: anatomy of
the segmented business system’, Socio-Economic Review, 4 (2): 239–77.
World Bank (2007) Global Economic Prospects 2007: managing the next wave of
globalization. Washington: World Bank.
REFERENCES
Accor 58
Adecco 19
Africa Regional Organisation
(AFRO) 53
Aliyev, Jahangir 71
All-China Federation of Trade
Unions (ACFTU) 36
Ananaba, Wogu 32
Anglo American plc 95–111
Cost benefit calculations on
HIV/AIDS 97–8
Relations with unions Africa
99–111
Relations with unions
Colombia 104 –11
Anglo Gold Ashanti 96–7, 99,
111
APV 20
Arcelor 59
Azerbaijan 70–2, 89
Ballast Nedam 59
BASF 77–8
BHP Billiton 96–7, 107
Bickham, Edward 104
Bilateralism 8, 12, 22, 50, 108,
115
Funding 86–7
Education 91–2
Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation 13
BMW 59
Bosch 59
Bouygues 71
BP 18, 70–1
Brazil 18
Paper workers 47
Unions 49
Resources 118
Bridge builders 82
Brimpong, John 100
Browne, Ann 105
Brunel 60
Building Workers’ International
(BWI)
Overview 7, 53
IFAs 57, 58–60, 63, 66–8, 69
Model IFA 121–5
Bustos, Carlos 106
Campaigning 30, 36, 55, 93, 106
Strategic 58, 92–3
Carbones del Cerrejón 104–11
Carrefour 58
Chevron 70
China 14, 15, 56, 67, 117
Chiquita 58
CIS
Unions 47
Colombia 19
Unions 36, 44, 95–111
Communist trade unions 27–
31, 34, 47, 82
Confédération Générale du
travail (CGT) 28, 31, 36
Confederazione Generale
Italiana del Lavoro (CGIL)
31
Corporate Social Responsibilit y
And trade unions 67
And IFAs 61
And Anglo American plc
96–7, 103, 110
Council of Global Unions 54
Daimler–Chrysler 75–8, 59
Danone 34, 58, 61–2
Deluquez, Jaime 105–6
Diffuse reciprocit y 50
EADS 59
EDF 59
Education 80–94
Definition 81
Estimate of union members
involved 81
Funding of 11, 53, 86–7,
118–19
Aims 8, 32–3, 35, 83, 116–17
Methods 70, 81, 84–5, 90–1
Outcomes 10, 36, 56, 80,
82–3, 87–90, 91, 94
And networking 71–2, 76–7,
79, 117
GUF programmes 55, 57, 64,
83–4, 93, 123, 128
Marginalisation of 91–2
HIV/AIDS 103, 110–11, 123
Colombia 104–7, 110
Education International (EI)
Overview 7
Staffing 45
Endesa 57, 59, 107, 108
ENI-Agip 70
Euradius 60
European Industry Federations
93
European Trade Union
Confederation (ETUC) 33,
36
European Works Councils
(EWC) 21
And IFAs 62, 73
Export Processing Zones (EPZ)
14
Externalisation 18, 55, 66, 117
Faber-Castell 58
Falck 60
Fenaltec 108
Fenosa 107–8
Fimmen, Edo 27, 28–9, 56, 118
Flags of Convenience (FOC)
34, 64, 86
FNPR 47, 88
FNV Mondiaal 86, 88
Fonterra 59
France Telecom 60
Freire, Paulo 85
Freudenberg 58
Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES)
77, 86
Gallin, Dan 34, 39
GEA 59
General Agreement on Tariffs
and Trade (GATT) 13
Germany 17, 19, 20
Unions 25–7, 29–30, 42, 62
Codetermination 73
Relations to GUFs 44, 49
Education 84–5
Ghana Mineworkers’ Union
99–100, 102, 106
Global Business Coalition
(GBC) 97
Global Compact 99
And IFAs 127
Global Union Federations
List of GUFs 7
Structures 6–7
Functions 8
And companies 16, 21
Index
145
Formation 26–7
And ITUC 32, 36
Forms of authority 43–4
Membership 46–8
Regional structures 48–50
Finances 50–2, 56
Restructuring 54
Collaboration bet ween 55–6
Global Union Research
Network (GURN) 93
Globalisation 12–22
Definition 12
History 17
Current wave 4, 12–15
And MNCs 16–17
Consequences for trade
unions 22
Goodyear 74–5, 78
Guinea-Bissau 15, 19
H&M 59
HIV/AIDS
Trade unions 63–4, 108
Mining sector 96, 97–9,
100–4, 109, 110–11
Education 83–4, 87, 118
IFAs 123, 128
Hochtief 58
Human Resource Management
Collaborative 20
Calculative 20
IFMetall 106
IG BCE 75, 78
IG Metall 34, 78
IKEA 58, 66–7
Impregilo 60
Indonesia 32
Informal Work 5, 9, 14–19, 22,
43, 76, 93, 117, 118, 119
International Chemical, Energy,
Mine and General Workers’
Unions (ICEM)
Overview 7
Staffing 45
Finances 52–3
Education 57, 80, 89, 90–1
IFAs 58– 60, 67, 126–9
Caspian Energy Network
70–1
Goodyear 75
BASF 77–8
HIV/AIDS 87
And Anglo American plc
95–111
International Federation of
Journalists (IFJ)
Overview 6, 7
Staffing 45
IFAs 60
International Framework
Agreements (IFAs) 57–68
List of IFAs 58–60
Core Labour Conventions
61, 64
Content 63–6
Negotiations 58
HQ unions 62
Recognition agreements 65
Implementation 63, 66–7,
117
Suppliers and contractors
65–6
And networks 69, 73, 79
And developing countries
67–8
BWI Model Agreement
121–5
Lafarge IFA 126–9
Anglo Gold Ashanti 111
International Labour
Organisation
Formation 28
Core Labour Standards 14,
61–2, 65
Freedom of Association
14–15
Code of Practice on HIV/
AIDS in the Workplace 102
IFAs 117, 121, 122, 123, 126,
127, 128
International Metalworkers’
Federation (IMF)
Overview 6, 7
History 30
Staffing 45
IFAs 57, 58–60, 62, 63,
65–6, 67
Networks 75, 78, 79
World Auto Council 79
Education 89, 90
And NUM 99
International Textile, Garment
and Leather Workers’
Federation (ITGLW F)
Overview 7
Staffing 45
IFAs 57, 66–7
Research 93
International Trade Secretariats
(ITSs)
Formation 25–7
Activities 29, 30–1, 34, 35
International Trade Union
Confederation (ITUC)
Structure 6–7
History 25, 28, 31–6
And ETUC 36
Executive members 42, 88
Membership 46, 47, 51, 81
Finances 51, 53
Regions 48, 49
Millennium review 54
Social clause 61, 116
ILO 116
International Transport
Workers’ Federation (ITF)
Solidarity 3
Overview 7
History 30, 31–2
FOC 34, 64, 86
Staffing 45
Education 80
Research 93
International Union of Food,
Agriculture, Hotels,
Restaurants, Catering,
Tobacco and Allied
Workers’ Associations (IUF)
Overview 7, 48, 54
McDonald’s 20
History 33
Danone 34, 61–2
Staffing 45
Collaboration 55, 89
IFAs 57, 58–9, 63, 67
Recognition Agreements 65
Regions 53
Nestlé Net work 75–6, 78
Education 86
International Working Men’s
Association 24–5
ISS 59
Japan
Production methods 5
Trade 16
Unions 33–4
Relations with GUFs 42, 44,
49, 119
Labour’s Alternative 28
Lafarge 58, 60, 65
IFA 126–9
Latency 43, 50, 55
Leoni 59
Levinson, Charles 9, 34, 76, 118
Linde 107
LO Norway 76, 86
LO-FTF 86, 87
LO-TCO 86, 87, 106
Lukoil 59, 66, 70
McDonald ’s 20
McDermott 71–2
Manpower 19
Merger 39, 54 –5
Merks, Ernst 62
Merloni 59
Metro 58
Mexico 21
Migrant labour 16, 26, 65, 101,
127
INDEX
146
Minilateralism 11, 39, 50–6,
70, 79, 111
Montes, Adolfo Gonzáles 110
Multinational Companies
(MNCs)
History 17
And unions 20–2
And GUFs 16
Employment relations 16–20
IFAs 58– 60
NAG 60
Nampak 60
National Union of Mineworkers
(NUM)
And Anglo American plc
99–103
And ICEM 75
Organising 90
Nestlé 19, 75–8
Networks
Benefits 47, 68, 69
Difficulties 56, 73–4
Communications 67, 69, 74
IFAs 73, 79
HQ unions 79
Role of companies 73
Conditions for success 70,
72–4
Caspian Energy Network
70–2, 78
Nestlé Net work 75–6, 78
BASF Network 77, 78
Goodyear Network 74–7, 78
FOC inspectors’ network 64
Nigeria 18, 32, 104
Non-governmental
organisations 4, 5, 47, 76–7,
86, 87, 92
Normark, Anita 43, 129
Norske Skog 59
North America
USA 14, 21
Trade Union history 27,
28, 33
Activism 88
Relation to GUFs 42, 47,
48, 49
BASF 78
Goodyear 75
Owens Illinois 107
Observatório Social 94
Ogolnopolskie Propozumienie
Zwiazkow Zawodowych
(OPZZ) 36
Oil and Gas Workers’ Union
(OGWU)
Caspian Energy Network
71–2, 78
Oil pipelines 70
Organisation for Economic
Cooperation and
Development (OECD)
Guidelines for MNCS 16, 121
Unions 46–8, 52, 91, 93, 117
OTE Telecom 59
Owens Illinois 107, 109–10
Pakapath, Aranya 80
Petrol and Chemical Federation
of ailand (PCFT)
Goodyear 74–5
Pol-ung Anan 74–5
Portugal Telecom 60
Prym 59, 65
PSA Peugeot Citroen 60, 67
Public Services International
(PSI)
Overview 7
Staffing 45
Private Equity 55
IFAs 59
Research 93
Quebecor 60
RAG 60
Randstad 19
Red International of Labour
Unions (RILU) 25, 28
Renault 59
Research
Education 87–8
GUFs 91–4
Global Unions Research
Network (GURN) 93
Rheinmetall 59, 62
Rhodia 60
Röchling 59, 62
Royal BAM 60
Russian Oil and Gas Workers’
Union (ROGWU) 66, 78
Sanchez, Jorge Leon 109
SCA 59
Securitas 60
Shell, Royal Dutch 18, 99
Shmakov, Mikhail 47
Sintracarbón 104 –11
Sintraelecol 105, 108
Sintraquim 105, 108
Sintravidricol 108
Skanska 59
SKF 59
Smurfitt 107–8
Socar 70–2
South Africa 44
HIV/AIDS 101
Unions 34–5, 47, 49, 99
Chamber of Mines 99
South Korea 5, 14, 77
Soviet Union
Trade unionism 28, 29, 31,
35, 47, 55, 70–1, 77, 117
Education 81–2, 87–8
Stabilo 60
Staedtler 60
Statoil 58, 70
Structural Adjustment
Programmes (SAPs) 13
Stuart, Sir Mark Moody 97,
99, 109
Suomen Ammattiliittojen
Solidaarsuuskeskus
(SASK) 86–7
Sweden
IFAs 58– 60
IKEA 66–7
Project funding 86–7, 94
Colombia 106
Telefonica 59
Trades Union Congress (TUC)
32
Transformational change
117–18
Umicore 60
Union Network International
(UNI)
Overview 7
Staffing 45
Regions 48
IFAs 58– 60, 63
United Steel Workers of
America (USWA) 74–5
Uricoechea, Salvador 106
Vallourec 60
Vedior 19
Veidekke 60
VKP 47
Volkerwessels 60
Volkswagen
World Works Council 73
IFA 59, 65
Wal-Mart 16, 20
Waz Group 60
World Bank 17, 61
World Confederation of Labour
(WCL) 25, 31, 36, 51
World Economic Forum (WEF)
16
World Federation of Trade
Unions (WFTU) 30–5, 47
Xstrata 96–7, 107
Zokwana, Senzeni 103
INDEX
