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

The role of the ILO in promoting the development – Drouin
A more sensible solution, as advocated by both Hepple and Germanotta,
would be to simply require a common interest between workers
involved in the primary and secondary actions. 13
In the context of the implementation of IFAs, the limitations to
sympathy strikes imposed by national laws might prevent workers
employed by an enterprise from fully exercising their collective power in
the event that a violation of an agreement occurs at a specific site. Workers
might not be in a position to take industrial action legally in support
of other people whose fundamental labour rights have been infringed but
who are employed by the company in different plants and countries. This
creates an imbalance of power between the parties in the process of social
dialogue since the consequences of non-compliance with an agreement
are tempered, on the employers’ side, by the restrictions to international
solidarity action on the part of workers. 14 Social dialogue channels created
by IFAs are therefore in need of the sanction mechanisms that are
inherent in traditional industrial relations systems (Lo Faro, 2000, p.
101).
In a study on trade union rights, Keith Ewing and Tom Sibley have
suggested that the ILO modernize Conventions No. 87 and No. 98 (freedom
of association and collective bargaining) to respond to the need to
adapt the standards to the context of globalization (Ewing and Sibley,
2000). They propose the development of a new text that both restates the
principles of freedom of association and collective bargaining as they have
been interpreted by the ILO bodies 15 and that provides for extended
rights for international trade union federations. As regards the latter, their
proposal reads as follows:
The rights of international trade union federations:
• the right to be consulted by and bargain with multinationals on
transnational employment matters;
13
For Germanotta, the common interest of workers is to be determined by workers themselves and
“every struggle by workers anywhere has a direct and immediate bearing upon the interests of workers everywhere,
given that they are members of the same economic class within the same global economic system”
(Germanotta, 2002, p. 32).
14
As Otto Kahn-Freund emphasized some time ago: “There can be no equilibrium in industrial relations
without a freedom to strike” (Kahn-Freund, 1972, pp. 224). This observation, based on national collective
bargaining practices, seems to hold true in today’s global context.
15
Notably the Committee on Freedom of Association and the Committee of Experts.
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