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

International framework agreements: A reassessment – Dan Gallin
In the United States, trade union jurisdictional lines in certain industries
are extremely blurred. … This results in several unions having bargaining
rights for different plants of the company. Each is therefore confronted by
the total combined strength of the company although it may be bargaining
with a local plant official. … To offset this very great disadvantage in
power at the bargaining table, the Industrial Union Department of the
AFL-CIO (IUD) has developed a co-ordinated bargaining program.
Under this plan all unions with collective bargaining rights within a plant
of a given company work out their demands and bargaining strategy
jointly. Thus a company would have a single set of demands and a single
strategy to contend with, backed by a number of different unions in a
common front. Although still in its initial stages, this plan has already
achieved some notable successes, particularly with General Electric, Westinghouse
and other companies (Levinson, 1972, pp. 103-104).
The same factors that led North American unions to adopt the
coalition bargaining strategy would apply even more at international
level, where by definition in almost all cases, different national unions
would hold bargaining rights in different production sites of the same
company. 2 Consequently, the necessity of working out “their demands
and bargaining strategy jointly” would be even more compelling in terms
of the objective of building an international countervailing union force
to counter the “combined strength of the company”. It would make the
coalition bargaining strategy even more relevant.
However, in addition to working towards creating an international
collective bargaining situation where union and management power
would be more evenly balanced, in seeking to coordinate union activities
at TNC level the ITSs also responded to the perceived need of their
member unions for mutual support in conflicts, whether or not within a
formal bargaining framework.
As things turned out, the ICF itself successfully practised this strategy
in many instances, starting in the mid-1960s (Levinson, 1972, pp.
112-17). The ICF action against the Saint-Gobain glass company in
1969 attracted international attention. It was simultaneously conducted
in four countries, including a 26-day strike in the United States, and it
was the first major post-World War II international trade union action
based on the principle of coalition bargaining.
2
The exceptions are the labour movement in the US and Canada, and in the United Kingdom and
Ireland, where some unions hold membership and collective bargaining rights in both countries.
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