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

Cross-border social dialogue and agreements
After the third meeting, the Philips management apparently
decided against continuing to engage with the unions in a discussion of
their labour relations at international level. A fourth meeting, planned
for 1971, was to discuss the possibility of establishing a permanent joint
advisory committee that would examine employment, social policy and
industrial relations problems within the Philips group, but “owing to the
company’s increasing hesitancy” this was indefinitely postponed (Levinson,
1972, p. 132).
A Philips European Forum was formed in 1996 as a European
works council (EWC) under Article 13 of the EWC Directive (European
Council, 1994). Like other EWCs, its mandate is limited to “information
and consultation”. In February 2001, the IMF held its first Philips
World Conference, with about 60 participants from 18 countries, which
established a steering committee and a task force to build an effective
information network. The conference also considered that the establishment
of a world works council, “to complement the existing European
Works Council (European Philips Forum — EPF)” was necessary,
because “Philips gears its decision-making to the global level. The emerging
trend whereby production plants are moved to low-wage countries
requires a global organization of trade unions and company employee
representatives” (IMF, 2001). There is no IFA covering Philips.
IUF had taken an active interest in international coordination of
trade union bargaining since 1958, when it undertook a comparative
survey of wages and working conditions in British-American Tobacco
(BAT). The issue was also on the agenda of sectoral conferences in 1961
for meat and tobacco companies.
BAT was in fact the first company where the IUF organized solidarity
action between member unions in different countries representing
workers in the same TNC.
The action was in defence of the Pak Cigarette Labour Union
(PCLU), which represented workers at the Pakistan subsidiary of BAT.
The PCLU was formed in 1961 but was not recognized. Instead, the
union faced lockouts, arrests, dismissals and fines. In February 1963, it
went on strike, during which its general secretary was jailed for four
months and 12 union members were dismissed. The IUF organized
financial support for the dismissed workers and called on its members at
BAT to raise the issue with their local management. In December, the
general secretary of the British Tobacco Workers’ Union, Percy Belcher,
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