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

Cross-border social dialogue and agreements
solidarity. Finally, the internal difficulties of organizing transnational
union coordination should not be underestimated. Some national unions
were reluctant to transfer part of their responsibility to the international
level or even grant to this level sufficient resources to efficiently carry out
the tasks involved. Levinson himself thought the success of the threestage
strategy depended more on union resolve than on international
institutions or employers’ goodwill, but observed that the main objective
of many ITSs was to support the position of their national affiliates rather
than to foster stronger international cooperation (Levinson, 1972,
p. 141).
Obstacles to transnational collective bargaining became the object
of scientific debate in the 1970s. Research, led by Herbert Northrup,
Richard Rowan, and their staff at the Industrial Research Unit of the
Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and implemented in
a series of case studies from 1972 to 1979, outlined the weaknesses of the
early attempts at transnational collective bargaining and concluded the
failure of Levinson’s strategy (for example Northrup and Rowan, 1979).
Some researchers closer to the union movement did the same (such as
Etty, 1978; Caire, 1984; Tudyka, 1986; Reutter, 1996; and Müller et al.,
2003). Rebecca Gumbrell-McCormick, on the basis of extensive interviews
with leading union actors, maintains that the aim of the world
councils was in fact not transnational collective bargaining, but a more
modest one of transnational coordination of trade union action (Gumbrell-McCormick,
2000a, p. 190; 2000b, p. 380). It is conceivable that,
after the event, actors might sometimes minimize the importance of what
had been their objectives, particularly when they have not been (or only
partly) attained. Levinson, however, clearly referred to transnational collective
bargaining, including wages and conditions, although he was well
aware that such a programme would be difficult to achieve:
The third stage is the decisive one of integrated negotiations around
common demands. This would involve the parent (company) and all or
some of the subsidiaries. Similar wage rates would be difficult to achieve at
the outset but proportionate increases could be sought. More reasonably,
demands would concern job security, salary systems, pension programmes,
training and retraining, industrial democracy and asset formation. Such a
strategy necessarily depends upon the degree of union strength, the industrial
relations history and the structure of the company’s operations. It is
one thing to formulate such a programme, another to carry it out. The
difficulties and obstacles of all kind are enormous. (Levinson, 1972,
p. 111).
50