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

Transnational collective bargaining at company level – da Costa and Rehfeldt
the ambit of the WFTU a “European coordination committee” with
union representatives from Michelin’s European subsidiaries. Despite the
ICF’s refusal to join that initiative, several Italian and United Kingdom
(UK) unions of the same tendency took part. The ICF created its own
world council for Michelin only in 1971, after the affiliation of the
CFDT’s chemical federation. Force Ouvrière, a minority union in the
company, only joined it in 1976 (Sinclair, 1978, pp. 80f). At Dunlop-
Pirelli, the ICF created a council in 1972, which excluded the Confederazione
Italiana Sindacati dei Lavoratori (CGIL), the majority union in
the firm. The council was boycotted by UK shop stewards who preferred
to establish bilateral contacts with their Italian CGIL colleagues. 5
Despite a few important successes, international trade union action
did not reach Levinson’s third stage — integrated negotiations — during
his time in office. Reaching stage one — the organization of international
solidarity during industrial conflicts — was difficult enough. The examples
used by Levinson are proof of strong union activism and successful
workers’ efforts for international solidarity in the 1970s.
For stage two, Levinson gives only four examples, three of which
come from France: Saint-Gobain, Michelin and Rhone-Poulenc, as well
as Royal Dutch-Shell. He also mentions “the case of winning wage parity
between Canadian and US workers in the same company” (Levinson,
1972, p. 132). But this was an exceptional example due to the fact that
workers on both sides of the border were members of the same union.
The coordination of their transnational action entailed having strong
strike funds and ensuring that contracts ended at the same time. There
was no language barrier and the historical traditions and industrial relations
structures were quite similar (da Costa, 1999). Yet even in this
example, internal coordination problems existed and, since the 1970s,
there has been a tendency towards union autonomy in Canada; the Canadian
branch of the UAW, for instance, broke away in 1985, becoming the
Canadian Auto Workers. Though this North American model was the
one Levinson had in mind, the complexities of the European situation
added their own difficulties, compounded when other continents were
included.
As for integrated bargaining with the management of an MNE —
Levinson’s stage three — the only example in the 1970s was Philips,
5
These contacts led to what some authors (Moore, 1978; Piehl, 1974) have considered as the first
transnational European strike in 1972.
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