CROSS-BORDER SOCIAL DIALOGUE AND AGREEMENTS: An ...

International framework agreements in the context of global production – Hammer
Changing structures of global production systems
In theories of global production and industrial organization, the
dynamics of MNCs are kept separate from those of inter-firm relations:
they perform different industrial functions, operate at different levels of
value-added production within global value chains, and are based on different
forms of coordination and governance (Dicken, 2003; Milberg,
2004a; Gereffi et al., 2005; Ponte and Gibbon, 2005). The logic of IFAs,
however, requires the international labour movement to consider (at
least) two strategic movements: that within an MNC, and that between a
lead firm and its global value chain/production network. Taking into
account differences in MNC organization and strategy (see for example
Dicken, 2003; Bair and Ramsay, 2003) as well as forms of value chain
coordination and governance (Gereffi et al., 2005) will leave us with an
even more complex picture. A further conceptual problem is that the
literature rarely integrates labour as an agent in the social regulation of
the global economy. While this is not the place to develop an approach
of the social governance of global value chains, we shall consider IFAs in
the context of global productive structures and labour strategies.
The tension between those two movements is reflected further in
two historical episodes of economic and organizational restructuring —
the emergence of the MNC as well as that of outsourcing and offshoring.
Gereffi (2005b), for example, contrasts the rise of the multidivisional
MNC and foreign direct investment (FDI) of the 1950s and 1960s in
Latin America with the rise of global retailers, marketers and branded
manufacturers of the 1970s and 1980s in East Asia. While the former
were based on locally owned subsidiaries, geared towards import substitution
and concentrated on petrochemical, pharmaceutical, automobile
and production goods industries, the latter were dominated by exportsubstitution
strategies on the basis of non-proprietary links between manufacturers
and distributors and could be found in the apparel, footwear,
consumer electronics and toy industries. It is this tension between those
logics of industrial organization, the relation between the lead MNC and
its value chain, that the labour movement has been trying to come to
terms with, among others via the instrument of IFAs. On the theoretical
level as well, we can distinguish between different approaches.
Feenstra (1998) characterized economic globalization in terms of
the increasing integration of trade parallel to a disintegration of production.
He noted the unprecedentedly high percentage of merchandise
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