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

International framework agreements in the context of global production – Hammer
Conclusions: The challenge of buyer-driven value
chains for IFAs
It was argued earlier that IFAs constitute an important step in the
development of international industrial relations. They recognize a range
of trade union bodies as bargaining partners, and establish a terrain of
minimum substantive and procedural issues that are open for negotiation
— a terrain that has expanded considerably in the last few years. IFAs
have moved beyond corporate codes of conduct and represent a clear
advance on unilateral declarations of intent on social and labour issues.
IFAs do not necessarily stop with information and consultation but, both
in substantive and procedural terms, contain important “bargaining” elements
and create links to more institutionalized industrial relations at
national and regional level (on this matter, see also Schömann et al.,
2007; Bourque, 2005).
At the same time, the proliferation of IFAs has not only happened
under international-level leadership but has gained recognition at the
national level. Apart from the increasing integration of national actors as
signatories and parties in the implementation and monitoring process,
national trade unions have also led debates and engaged with key issues
of such agreements (Rüb, 2004; Descolonges, 2006). It remains to be seen
whether such engagement is translated into transnational campaigns and
sustained workplace capacity, and what forms of internationalism and
spatial solidarities develop. Equally, there is an interesting emerging “grey
area” of transnational agreements that are not conventionally referred to
as IFAs (for example, the agreements signed by EWCs and without the
participation of global union federations with Air France, CSA Czech
Airlines, Ford Europe, General Motors Europe, Suez, Triumph International,
and Vivendi/Veolia; see EWCB 2004; see also the agreements collected
by the European Commission [Pichot, 2006]).
In terms of global production structures, IFAs are mainly geared
towards MNCs’ global operations, and probably MNCs’ main suppliers.
Furthermore, IFAs’ substantive and procedural provisions in fact presuppose
workplace organization throughout the chain. As said above, the
dilemma resulting from buyer-driven value chains that are largely coordinated
via market-based mechanisms is not only that implementation
and monitoring require workplace organization but also that the key
agents are situated outside the realm of production. In MNCs in producer-driven
value chains, it is strong home-country unions and works
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