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

International framework agreements: A reassessment – Dan Gallin
in the following months). Since then, the Guatemalan union has become
the core of a national food workers’ federation and the collective bargaining
agreement has been regularly renegotiated, although the plant
now has other owners.
The IUF has had many meetings with Coca-Cola top management
since then to discuss problems arising in the Coca-Cola system, and has
reached agreements on specific issues, but without a formal framework.
When the IUF met Coca-Cola management representatives on
25-27 May 1984, when the company was obviously ready to make extensive
concessions to put an end to the conflict, the question arose as to
whether the IUF delegation should demand the establishment of a general
IFA as part of the settlement. The IUF general secretary decided
against it because, with the lives of the workers in the plant still under
threat (the Guatemalan army had surrounded the plant since the beginning
of the occupation and was still there), he believed that the IUF
should not risk delaying the settlement by introducing extraneous issues.
The overriding priority had to be to protect the Guatemalan affiliate and
its members. The IFA could wait.
The Nestlé conflict in 1973 and especially the conflicts with Coca-
Cola in 1980 and 1984-85 received extensive press coverage. The IUF
had demonstrated its capacity for creating serious inconvenience to even
large and powerful TNCs. It may be safely assumed that by 1984 at the
latest, the IUF had caught the attention of all leading TNCs in its field
of activity.
The Danone agreement was reached outside any context of conflict,
and all discussions were conducted in a friendly atmosphere of mutual
respect and trust. It would be wrong to suggest that Danone had become
interested in concluding an IFA with the IUF because it feared a conflict
with the IUF: no serious conflict was on the horizon and, given the
Danone corporate philosophy, it was highly unlikely to arise. However,
Danone had perceived the IUF to be a serious international counterpart
and had realized that signing an agreement with it was not only a moral
and political imperative but also a smart business move.
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