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

Cross-border social dialogue and agreements
• the right to be consulted by and bargain with multinationals on the
application and observance of core labour standards throughout the
corporate structure, and throughout the supply chain;
• the right to organise industrial action against multinational enterprises
and the right of workers to take part in such action (Ewing
and Sibley, 2000, p. 33).
If the ILO were to endorse such a proposal, it would greatly promote
the development of IFAs. First, it would encourage social dialogue
and collective bargaining at international level. Second, it would partly
redress the imbalance of power between parties to the agreements by
allowing workers to put pressure on MNCs through the use of industrial
action. However, the right to organize industrial action should not be the
sole prerogative of international trade union federations, as the wording
of Ewing and Sibley’s proposal suggests. In practice, transnational solidarity
actions are sometimes coordinated by different national trade
unions. A new ILO convention should adequately reflect this situation
and allow national trade unions to take part in consultations with MNCs
and to organize industrial action.
While updating the existing ILO Conventions to ensure the protection
of international trade union rights seems a valuable means of promoting
the development of IFAs, concrete proposals to follow this course
of action are likely to face strong opposition from some of the organization’s
constituents, especially the employers’ group. At least, this is the
prediction drawn from the history of the adoption of the ILO’s Tripartite
Declaration of Principles concerning Multinational Enterprises and
Social Policy in 1977 (ILO, 2006a).
From the mid-1960s, concerns about the growing importance of
MNCs on the international scene and the impact of their activities on
social and labour conditions worldwide led the ILO to convene tripartite
meetings to consider the opportunity for and possible forms of an ILO
intervention on the matter. 16 During the discussions, workers’ experts
and representatives expressed the need to extend protection, at international
level, of the right of workers to take part in trade union activities
16
In 1967, the International Institute for Labour Studies organized a symposium on transnational
industrial relations. In 1972, the ILO held a Tripartite Meeting on the Relationship Between Multinational
Corporations and Social Policy. This was followed by two additional tripartite meetings on MNCs in 1976
and 1977. The subjects and outcomes of these meetings are summarized at: http://www.ilo.org/public/english/employment/multi/tripartite/history.htm.
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