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and their companies must be resolved at the level closest to the workplace. The normal
costs of these annual meetings are met by ENI. As regards the agreement itself, the parties
may agree in advance to any modifications or additions to be made to its contents. 101 The
global aspect of employee representation and involvement is of increasing relevance in the
oil and gas sector.
4.2.6. Employee–employer relations
4.2.6.1. At industry level
159. The social function of maintaining industrial peace is represented primarily through the
legal function of contractibility. A collective agreement is an agreement of fixed duration
between the social partners designed to bind the parties into a functioning relationship. 102
Collective bargaining at the sectoral and enterprise levels serves this end. In the United
States for example, the National Labor Relations Act forms the basis of an industrial
relations system in which collective bargaining is the key institutional mechanism to
resolve labour-management conflict. The centrality of the collective bargaining process is
strengthened by the exclusive managerial prerogative at the strategic level of the company.
As a result, management has the sole right to decide the strategic direction of the company,
while a union has to negotiate the impact of these policies through the collective
bargaining process. These distinctive features of the United States’ industrial relations
system have produced particular patterns in company-level governance. At a work unit
where a union is represented, industrial democracy is limited to industrial jurisprudence.
Through collective bargaining, unions and employers negotiate the complex set of rules
governing terms of employment, including the deployment of labour, promotions and layoffs.
Therefore, trade unions, as bargaining units, play an important role in determining the
industrial relations in the US oil industry.
160. In the United Kingdom, partnership agreements normally include three major sets of
provisions, reflecting the main interests of each party: for workers, a commitment to some
form of employment security; for the employer, union acceptance of various forms of
flexibility; and for the union, an undertaking from the employer that it will be able to exert
significantly more influence over corporate business decisions. Such partnerships have
been associated with single union agreements and with broad programmes of
organizational change, as well as with stakeholders. They can also include participation in
employee involvement programmes. Others define workplace partnership in terms of
commitment to a set of principles that do not include recognition of autonomous worker
representation. The distinctive character of these partnerships arises from the particular
contextual factors that have motivated the parties to cooperate more fully and formally
since the mid-1990s. A number of key factors have been observed. First, the adoption in
the mid-1990s of a new political agenda by the incoming Government – which placed
emphasis on stakeholding, consensual relationships and partnership – provided a
favourable climate for widespread interest in partnership relations at the workplace level;
second, the Involvement and Participation Association and the Trades Union Congress
have both played a major role in stimulating interest in partnership; and third, employers’
organizations have not opposed partnerships. 103
101 “Transnational industrial relations agreement signed at Eni”, in European Works Council
Bulletin, Issue 44, Mar./Apr. 2003, pp. 7–9.
102 G. Casale, op. cit., pp. 15–16.
103 P. Haynes et al.: “Workplace union–management partnership: prospects for diffusion of
contemporary British approaches in New Zealand”, in P. Holland, J. Teicher and R. Gough (eds):
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