Jane Wills, Department of Geography, Queen Mary, University of London, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS, (UK)(0)20 7882 5414, j.wills@qmw.ac.uk
(Forthcoming publication in the Review of International Political Economy)
ABSTRACT
At the present conjuncture there are real opportunities for international trade unions to forge coalitions with other social movements, to foster transnational connections between workers, consumers and intermediaries, and to engage directly with global employers in order to bargain for workers. As companies declare their support for ethical practice in production and trade, a number of global union federations have seized the opportunity to sign International Framework Agreements with trans-national companies. These agreements secure commitments on the part of TNCs to respect workers’ rights. The agreement between the French-owned global hotel chain Accor and the International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers’ Associations (IUF) is explored in this paper. The Accor-IUF agreement has proved critical in supporting union organising efforts in the United States, Canada and Indonesia. It has also allowed the IUF close involvement in trade union organisation in Australia, in educational activities in Africa and Asia-Pacific, and in efforts to start organising work in the UK and New Zealand. By integrating the international agreement into the operation of the European Works Council, the IUF has also found a means to overcome the geographical parochialism of many such bodies. This paper argues that such international agreements are an excellent way to defend and advance workers’ rights in the global economy while also allowing trade unions to develop a sophisticated multi-scalar response to the challenges of globalisation.
KEYWORDS: labour internationalism, globalisation, trade union rights, trans-national corporations, international framework agreements, corporate responsibility
Introduction
Just ten years after the neo-liberal euphoria that accompanied the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, street protests in Seattle USA bore testament to an emerging current of international dissent. In their mobilisation against the World Trade Organisation, environmentalists, feminists, human rights activists and trade unionists found common ground in their opposition to global corporations and the “policies that give them free reign” (Klein, 2000, 338). No sooner had the apologists for the rich declared the end of history and the triumph of capitalism, than a powerful coalition of social movements took to the streets and the cyber-networks to articulate the experiences of those marginalised and oppressed by ongoing processes of globalisation. United by a concern for economic and social justice, campaigners are now mobilising to challenge the terms of world trade, the role of debt in the poverty of the majority world, the pricing and patenting of pharmaceuticals, the activities of biotechnology companies and the conditions of workers employed (directly or indirectly) by global corporations. Questions of economic inequality, corporate power and class have taken centre stage in political protest world-wide.
National governments, international regulatory bodies and global corporations have been quick to respond to this new mood of popular hostility and concern. The UN Global Compact was established by Secretary General, Kofi Annan, at the Davos World Economic Forum in February 1999 “to develop and promote the principles of human rights, labour standards and respect for the environment” (Financial Times, 2000).[2] This Compact has brought 12 Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) into direct contact with 50 leading multinationals, including such popular targets as Shell, Rio Tinto and Nike. The corporations involved have pledged themselves to nine principles that include support for human rights, trade unionism, anti-discriminatory practice and protection of the environment. Indeed, Mark Moody-Stuart, Chair of the Committee of Managing Directors from the Global Compact companies, and a representative from the Royal Dutch Shell Group, has even gone as far as to endorse the message of the protestors, declaring that:
Because we too are concerned at the requirement to address those in poverty who are currently excluded from the benefits that many of us share in the global economy, we share the objectives of the recent demonstrators in Seattle, Davos and Prague … Business has to accept that it has to demonstrate that it can deliver responsibly. (Financial Times, 2000)
Under political pressure, social and environmental responsibility have become ‘bottom line issues’, critical to the reputation of a company, the value of its brands, the attraction and retention of staff, and its success in the market-place. Ten years after the triumph of capitalism at the rubble of the Berlin Wall, global corporations are falling over each other to demonstrate their commitment to building a more humane social and economic world order.
In this regard many trans-national corporations (TNCs) have published codes of conduct committing themselves to responsible practice in employment, community and the environment (Diller, 1999; European Works Councils Bulletin, 2000a; Hale, 2000; Hughes, 2001; Pearson and Seyfang, 2001). In the UK, the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI), a tripartite body of Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), companies and trade unions, has also sought to promote ethical standards in production and trade (see Hale and Shaw, 2001). Moreover, Hughes (2001) identifies the development of similar bodies in the developing world as export-producers form associations to defend their brand on ethical grounds, in this case, in the Kenyan cut-flower industry. Yet as Hale (2000) suggests, with particular reference to the garment industry, these efforts to promote labour standards are constantly undermined by the downward pressure on costs associated with global competition, led by the very same companies that sign up to corporate codes. As Hale (2000, 354) remarks, “ the real issue is whether codes of conduct are an appropriate instrument for addressing the overall threat to labour standards in globalised industries”. When the NGO for which she works (Women Working Worldwide) has facilitated discussions about codes of conduct with the (mainly women) workers involved in the global garment supply chain, they find that workers welcome these initiatives but they also need the right to organise to improve their own working and living conditions. As Hale (2000, 356) puts it: “everywhere the struggle for genuine trade unionism was seen as more important than the promotion of company codes.”
In the contemporary context, trade unions should be well placed to intervene in these developments and debates. New social movements are coalescing around questions of workers’ rights and employment conditions in the global economy, many employers appear defensive about these concerns and many millions workers recognise the need for self organisation. By focusing on the importance of workers’ rights at all levels of the global economy, trade unions can play a critical role in the emerging networks of global protest to insist that union organising is essential to the defence of working conditions. The fact that trade unions represent workers at a variety of scales, from the workplace to the national and international, means that they can contribute in at least four different ways.
First, rather than allowing companies to adopt codes of conduct which are simply statements of good intent regarding corporate responsibility, the global union federations are in a position to monitor the implementation of such agreements. Using their own networks of internal communication, and links to NGOs at the various sites of corporate activity, global federations of trade unions[3] can ensure that particular codes of conduct are respected.[4] Violations can then be used as leverage and campaigning issues to secure improved rights for workers along corporate chains. Moreover, the same networks can also be used to ensure that workers are consulted about and involved in the development of codes of conduct and any subsequent campaigns that take place (see Hale, 2000; Hale and Shaw, 2001).
Second, where global federations of trade unions have sufficient strength and the necessary channels of communication to senior management in any TNC, they can negotiate agreements that go beyond codes of conduct. Rather than statements of good intent, International Framework Agreements allow the unions a role in establishing the terms of good conduct and in monitoring developments on the ground. In this way, the IFA can endorse workers’ rights and then act as a support to union organising efforts in different parts of the world. Global union federations can ensure that workers’ rights are respected, that information is shared, and when necessary, build alliances to force the company to respect its agreements.
Third, when many campaigns in the North are being fought on behalf of workers in the South, there is a danger that assumptions are made about the best interests of workers in different parts of the world (see Kabeer, 2000). Campaigns about child labour or working conditions in the abstract can prompt companies to relocate or change their sub-contractor and so loose workers their much-needed employment. Global federations of trade unions are well placed to provide a bridge across geographical difference, between campaigners in one part of the world (often consumer activists in the main markets) with workers producing the goods in another. Dialogue can ensure that campaigns are built around the interests of those doing the work and in this way, the voices of workers in the free trade zones of the world can be heard alongside those of concerned western consumers. By getting involved, the trade unions can ensure that the needs of workers themselves are the key determinant of any campaign. Moreover, in this context, the focus on workers’ rights is critical as the freedom to organise allows workers to decide what is in their best interests.
Finally, by focusing on workers’ rights, global union federations can also provide invaluable service in highlighting the violation of those rights in all parts of the global economy, not simply the South (see Human Rights Watch, 2000). In this way, arguments about globalisation and working conditions can be ‘brought home’ to activists in the North. Whereas labour internationalism has often been viewed as an issue of aid and development, whereby rich workers in the North ‘help’ trade unions develop in the South, ongoing processes of globalisation are helping to break down these preconceptions (Waterman, 1998). In the past, job losses in the North have all too often been blamed on so-called ‘cheap’ workers in the developing world and there has been no effort to build solidarity between workers in the two spheres of the world (Kabeer, 2000). By highlighting the violations of human rights at both the centre and the developing periphery of the capitalist system, however, global federations of trade unions can begin to break down the notion that jobs are good when they are in the North and bad when they move to the South.
Moreover, genuine solidarity might involve unions in the North actually sanctioning the relocation of jobs to the South after negotiating agreements about the conditions of work and union involvement at the new site. In the wake of such relocation, a union could then ensure high levels of support for the workers being made redundant. Demands might be made for workers’ education and training, business support and investment in the social economy. Such solidarity is hard to imagine, but when so much new investment is taking place in the South regardless of union protests, genuine solidarity might prove a means to improve the lot of workers, both North and South. Moreover, in forming such alliances, workers could find common cause for the long term. In every location employers and governments are generally hostile to trade unionism; manufacturing workers are threatened with the relocation of investment if they organise; workers are often on short term or part time contracts and have little job security; the time involved in meeting work and family responsibilities erodes the free time and energy for organising activity; migrant workers may not have the status they need to live without fear of deportation; and unions themselves have few resources devoted to organising new workers. By developing new strategies focused on workers’ rights, trade unions might find ways to foster alliances and shared understanding between workers in different circumstances in different parts of the global economy (see also Ewing, 2000).
This paper seeks to contribute to ongoing debate about the ways in which unions can intervene to secure workers rights in the global economy. The first section of the paper briefly reviews the impact of globalisation on labour and a number of responses adopted by the international trade union movement. The paper then looks at the implementation of International Framework Agreements (IFAs) and the agreement between the International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers’ Associations (IUF) and Accor, the French-owned hotel chain, in more detail. The paper outlines the terms of the Accor-IUF trade union rights agreement (TURA) and then explores its impact through snap-shots of union activity in North America, Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia and the UK.[5] The paper concludes with some speculation about the future development of IFAs in the context of globalisation and new patterns of labour internationalism.
Trade Unions and Globalisation
As is well documented, globalisation has intensified spatial competition to attract capital. Sites of manufacturing production are often advertised on the basis of cheap, malleable and unorganised labour. Sites of potential service employment are increasingly marketed in the same way, most notably in the scramble to attract call centres and administrative operations in old rust-belt regions. In this context, workers’ organisation is often viewed as an expensive luxury in the cut-throat battle to secure jobs and investment. In their efforts to organise, workers might be threatened by the possibility of capital relocation or victimisation, and workers are genuinely scared about losing their jobs. Moreover, large companies are increasingly sub-contracting most of their production activities, making it more complicated for unions to organise the workers deployed by any large company. Chains of corporate activity may stretch over huge distances, and indeed, subcontracting itself makes it hard to even identify the networks of production associated with particular corporations (Hale and Shaw, 2001; Gallin, 2001). In the context of government and corporate hostility to trade union organisation and the real challenges posed by sub-contracting, contingent labour and stress at the workplace, trade unions in all parts of the world need a reassertion and/or extension of workers’ rights to organisation. As the IUF (2000a) declared in a statement issued just after the Seattle protests:
The issue is … how to defend the democratic and trade union rights of workers on both sides of the development divide from a globalization process which is undermining these rights while ravaging living and working conditions, public services, and the environment around the world.
The international labour movement has taken a number of initiatives to respond to the challenge of globalisation. At the highest level, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) has led a campaign to get labour standards onto the agenda of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), arguing that trade should be only be conducted with companies that abide by minimum social and environmental standards. These standards are to include workers’ right to organise and secure collective bargaining, the elimination of forced and child labour, and the elimination of discrimination in occupation and employment (the International Labour Organisation (ILO) core conventions on workers’ rights). The ICFTU has long sought to make compliance with these standards a condition of participating in world trade, governed by the rules of the WTO, with a role for the ILO in implementation.
There are, however, trade unionists and social movement activists on both sides of this debate (see Breitenfellner, 1997; Hensman, 2001; Hoogvelt et al., 1996; Hughes and Wilkinson, 1998; Waterman, 2001). While the majority would agree that there is a real need to regulate the actions of corporations and stop the ‘race to the bottom’, opinion is divided as to whether lobbying the WTO and using the ILO are the best way to achieve it. Indeed, as the WTO has led the process of neo-liberal globalisation it has little credibility as far as social and environmental standards are concerned. In practice, as illustrated by the limited social clause attached to the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA), organising workers to exercise their rights at work, or to gain rights to organise if they do not currently have them, remains critical to the impact of any social clause on the ground (see Compa, 2001).
The North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (NAALC) is a review mechanism that allows trade unions to raise complaints when employers in the NAFTA region are breaking national labour laws. Unions have to work together transnationally to raise complaints in a country other than that where the violation took place, and the reviews have proven valuable in publicising corporate misconduct. For Compa, the NAALC is a useful means to raise the issue of workers’ rights, but success depends upon strong trade union organisation. In a similar way, the rights gained for workers through the social protocol of the Maastricht Treaty in Europe require that unions help workers to exercise those rights on the ground. Making the instruments of the law work for workers depends upon the strength of local, national and international trade union organisation.
At the corporate level, the global union federations have concentrated their efforts on building networks of workers within particular TNCs. A recent review has identified 47 such initiatives which represent “the first steps, on the trade union side, towards the creation of structures within multi-national companies for the conduct of industrial relations at world level” (European Works Councils Bulletin, 2000b, 7, and 2001a). Concentrated in the metalworking, transport, utilities, telecoms and food industry, these corporate networks are focused on exchanging information, spreading organisation and monitoring codes of conduct. A number have also arisen through particular campaigns, such as the networks of unions challenging Rio Tinto; that built around a strike at Bridgestone-Firestone tires in the USA; the solidarity network fostered in support of the Tate and Lyle workers at Staley in the USA; and the response to Coca-Cola’s actions in Guatemala in the 1980s.
This practice of labour networking in TNCs goes back as far as the 1960s but the ease of communication and travel, coupled with the new corporate environment, now makes it much easier to bring workers together. A number of these networks have also been strengthened by the 1994 European Works Councils directive that requires all TNCs operating in the European Union to establish new procedures for transnational information sharing and consultation with workers. There are now an estimated 600 networks of employee representatives from different companies that meet each other at least once a year across the EU (see Wills, 1998; 2000, 2001). EWCs allow workers to meet the senior managers of their companies, and as we will see, some unions are beginning to use the EWC as a means to raise issues of corporate responsibility in and beyond the EU. In the context of popular anxiety about globalisation, on the back of global union networks and the development of EWCs, unions are finding new space to bargain with TNCs about transnational concerns.
Such encounters have led to at least 12 International Framework Agreements (IFAs) being signed by unions and senior managers in TNCs, and there are indications of more such deals in the pipeline (see European Works Councils Bulletin, 2001a; Table 1). Between them, these companies employ more than 1 million workers world-wide and include activities such as oil production, utilities provision, construction, manufacturing, retailing, cleaning, hotels and telecommunications. These companies are French, German, Scandinavian, British, Italian and Spanish and all are very global in scope. As indicated in Table 1, all the agreements include rights to union organisation and it follows that if workers are able to organise, they are in a better position to deal with questions of fair pay, hours of work, child labour, discriminatory practices, health and safety, and the environment. More importantly, these agreements also provide for the monitoring of corporate practice, and unions have a role in this process. In a number of cases the EWC is critical to this process of evaluation (especially at Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux and Vivendi) while the others have different mechanisms which involve managers and trade unions inspecting operations and meeting together to identify and prevent any violations of the agreement.
Table 1: TNC-Union International Framework Agreements
Company (sector)
Date
Employee-side parties
Issues covered
Accor (hotels)
June 1995
IUF
Union Rights
Artsana (toys)
Oct. 1997
Italian trade unions
Child labour, union rights, forced/prison labour, health, equality and non-discrimination, safety and environment, pay
Danone (food)
1989-1997
IUF
Union rights, equality and non-discrimination
Faber-Castell (writing, drawing, painting products)
March 2000
IFBWW and German trade unions
Child labour, union rights, forced/prison labour, health, equality and non-discrimination, safety and environment, pay
Hochtief (construction)
March 2000
IFBWW, German trade unions and German works council
Child labour, union rights, forced/prison labour, health, equality and non-discrimination, safety and environment, pay
Hyder (utilities)
March 1999
PSI
Child labour, union rights, forced/prison labour, health, equality and non-discrimination, safety and environment, pay
IKEA (furniture and retail)
May 1998
IFBWW
Child labour, union rights, forced/prison labour, health, equality and non-discrimination, safety and environment, pay
ISS (cleaning)
August 1998
UNI
Union rights
Statoil (oil)
July 1998
ICEM
Child labour, union rights, forced/prison labour, health, equality and non-discrimination, safety and environment, pay
Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux (utilities)
October 1998
EWC
Child labour, union rights, forced/prison labour, health, equality and non-discrimination, safety and environment, pay
Telefonica (services)
January 2000
UNI and Spanish trade unions
Union rights, Health, safety and environment
Viviendi (utilities)
Nov. 1996
EWC
Child labour, union rights, forced/prison labour
Source: European Works Councils Bulletin, 2001a, 10
These agreements can be critically important in allowing global union federations to get a better understanding of the global operation of particular companies, and more importantly, to act on any identified violations of human rights in the workplace. As an example, the IFA between Statoil, ICEM and the Norweigan Oil and Petrochemical Workers’ Union (NOPEF) which was signed in 1998 has allowed ICEM to intervene in a long-standing industrial dispute at the American Crown Central Petroleum refinery in Pasadena, Texas, USA. This refinery only serves Statoil on a long-term contract and the company locked out 256 workers after wage negotiations broke down in 1996. After using temporary labour to refine the oil for 5 years, the IFA allowed NOPEF representatives to go through the Statoil office in New York and arrange meetings with local trade unionists and managers in Texas. In January 2001 the issue was finally resolved and the IFA was critical in getting Statoil to intervene in the local dispute. Through relationships with the corporate headquarters in Norway, NOPEF and ICEM were able to use the international agreement to help solve a local dispute. Moreover, the agreement has allowed ICEM to get a more practical handle on union organising across the group. The IFA grants ICEM the right to support union organisation on the ground and they have been able to help train shop stewards in Azerbaijan where the company has a joint venture and to assist union organising activity in the Baltic and Polish service stations owned by Statoil (see European Works Councils Bulletin, 2001b).
The Accor-IUF Trade Union Rights Agreement
The IUF has prioritised the development of IFAs and has signed agreements with the French-owned food producer, Danone and the French-owned hotel and associated services company Accor. Both are companies with strong traditions of social partnership and both have long-standing relationships with the IUF. While the Danone agreement is more comprehensive in scope, it is the Accor agreement that provides a better case for examining the potential of IFAs to improve workers’ organising activity world-wide. Accor is one of the largest groups in the hotel, catering and tourism industry and it is best known for its Sofitel, Novotel, Mercure, Ibis, Motel 6, Red Roof Inns, Etap and Formula 1 chains of hotels. Accor is also active in the travel agency sector (and owns Carlson Wagon-lit), in casinos and in corporate services. The company employs more than 120,000 people in 142 countries, in at least 3000 medium-sized and small hotels.
The hotel sector has traditionally proved very difficult to organise for unions in the North; jobs are often short-term or part-time, labour turnover is high, wages and conditions are poor and management is largely hostile to union organisation (see Piso, 2000). In contrast, hotels have provided good jobs in some parts of the developing world and workers are well organised in countries like Barbados, the Philippines and Malaysia (personal interview with Ron Oswald, General Secretary of the IUF, 15.9.00). The IUF’s 1997 seminar for Accor workers in Africa also illustrated that the Niamey Sofitel in Niger, the Conakry Novotel in Guinea, the Abidjan Golf International Intercontinental in the Ivory Coast, the Orisha Novotel in Benin, the Arusha Novotel in Tanzania, the Accra Novotel in Ghana and the Accor chain in Egypt were at least partially unionised (IUF, 1997).
The IUF does not have strong union membership in Accor and explains the trade union rights agreement (TURA) as a product of particular relationships with the Human Resources Department and the corporate image of the company. The Human Resources Director has won prizes for his positive and progressive approach to industrial relations and the TURA has reinforced the brand as having a “clean, fresh, open, transparent image of the birdies flying off into the distance” (personal interview, Ron Oswald, IUF, 15.9.00). Signed in June 1995, the TURA endorses workers’ rights to join trade unions and the company states that it will not “oppose efforts to unionize its employees” (for the full text of the TURA, see Figure 1). As such, local IUF affiliates can use the TURA to reinforce their organizing efforts and to challenge any managers who violate this agreement.
Figure 1: the ACCOR-IUF Trade Union Rights Agreement
The Accor Group and the IUF noting that, in the global economy, all social and economic progress is contingent upon the maintaining of a society based on democratic values and respect for human rights; further noting that the hotel industry needs peace and social consensus in order to grow; being committed, therefore, to work in this direction, above all by the example they set; recalling the basic right of each employee to be represented and defended by a union of his or her choice; recognising the reciprocal legitimacy of the other party and its right to intervene in both social and economic affairs, while both retain their own responsibilities, to the extent that they comply with applicable laws, contracts or collective agreements; are therefore convinced that reinforcing democracy in the Group is the duty of both parties and that this implies both the recognition of differences over ways and means as well as the search for solutions through collective bargaining; further note that this goal requires, for its achievement, an effort at educating and informing the employees concerned and their representatives, so that they can better understand the problems, constraints and challenges faced by the company.
In this spirit, the Accor Group and the IUF shall undertake to
1. verify the faithful application by all Accor establishments of ILO Conventions 87, 98 and 135, pertaining respectively to
· the rights of employees to affiliate to the union of their choice;
· the protection of employees against all acts of discrimination that tend to violate freedom of association;
· the protection of employee representatives against any measures that could harm them, including discharge, motivated by their status or activities as employee representatives, insofar as they act in compliance with applicable laws, contracts or collective agreements.
The Accor Group therefore undertakes not to oppose efforts to unionize its employees.
The Accor Group considers respect for union rights to be part of the good reputation of its brand names;
2. encourage the management of subsidiaries and entities to allow union representatives to carry out their mandates and to have access to the same opportunities for training, pay increases and advancement as all other equally qualified employees.
Both parties agree that any differences arising from the interpretation or implementation of this agreement will be examined jointly, for the purpose of making recommendations to the parties concerned. The French version of this agreement shall be the point of reference.
The IUF can thus protect and extend the space affiliates have for collective organisation in the company, as outlined in the document presented to the Executive Committee in May 2000 (IUF, 2000b, 3):
These agreements [IFAs] do not seek to substitute in any way for local or national collective bargaining. Local and national organising and bargaining must continue to be seen as the essential building blocks of our affiliate’s strengths and thus the building blocks of the IUF’s strength and legitimacy. IUF agreements are in essence about organising and bargaining for “space”. The work of the IUF in this area is best seen as international bargaining aimed at protecting and enlarging the space in which IUF affiliates organise and bargain. In so many countries, in large part as a result of globalisation, we are witnessing efforts on the part of employers, often with the collusion of governments, to deny or shrink that space. Our international organising and bargaining activity must remain focused at directly protecting that space.
Once space for local trade unionism is secured through the TURA in this way, the IUF rely on “active and energetic and militant local organizing to fill that space. If they don’t we’ve done it for nothing” (personal interview, Ron Oswald, IUF, 15.9.00).
As we will see, the TURA has allowed the IUF to open doors for local unions to organise; it has allowed union affiliates to integrate the international dimension into everyday trade union activities; it has allowed the IUF to intervene and defend union organising efforts where local managers are violating the TURA; and it has helped to ignite the internationalism of workers in the sector. The TURA is reviewed in a formal way at every annual meeting of the Accor EWC and this allows non-European concerns to find their way onto the agenda of the EWC. The EWC has delegates from IUF affiliates in Belgium (from Wagons-Lits), Germany (from Wagons-Lits and Europcar), the Netherlands (from Wagons-Lits, the Novotel Hotel in Amsterdam and the Mercure in Postiljon Heerenven), Spain, Portugal (from the Novotel Hotel in Porto and the Mercure in Figueira da Foz), France (from the Sofitel Hotels in Lyons, Severes Paris and Quiberon), Switzerland and Italy (from the Ibis in Milan and the Novotel Hotel in Bologna). This forum has been in place since 1994 and it was only formally turned into an EWC in June 1996. By integrating the EWC into the TURA, the IUF is successfully using the EWC as part of its weaponry for promoting union organisation across the group. In many cases, EWCs have remained focused on a managerial and solely European agenda and the IUF has identified a way to use the TURA to counter these trends.
In the following text, the four key impacts of the TURA are explored in turn, drawing upon the experiences of affiliates in different parts of the world.
(i) Opening doors for union organising
Wherever possible the IUF has used the TURA to try and secure access for their local affiliates to organise workers in Accor hotels. In the UK for example, the IUF held a number of meetings with their affiliates who organise workers in this sector (the General and Municipal Workers Union (GMB) and the Transport and General Workers’ Union (T&G)) and Accor managers, to discuss union access to workers in the hotels. As Dave Turnbull, the T&G official responsible for hotels in London recalls, managers were adamant that “every employee had the right to belong to trade union but that didn’t extend to allowing any recruitment facilities or allowing us to represent anybody in the grievance and disciplinary procedure.” The unions divided up the 30-odd Accor hotels between them and asked that managers circulate union publicity material to their staff but nothing happened as a result.
The T&G later leafleted the Novotel hotel in Hammersmith, West London, but got little response. The majority of the workers were found to be on short-term placements from Continental Europe, with little interest in union organisation. Others were found to be working for agencies, making it difficult to organise them for the long term. As a consequence, the unions have done very little to try and build organisation in the Accor chains and without such efforts, the TURA cannot come into play. The hotel sector in the UK is notoriously poorly unionised and in London the T&G has union recognition agreements with just three chains, Thistle, Renaissance and the Sheraton, representing a very small proportion of the workers involved in the sector. Recent legislative change in the UK is making it easier to access workers in organising campaigns and the union has been able to “build up quite a good working relationship with some of the personnel managers” (Dave Turnbull, interview, 14.1.01). But current organising efforts have been focused on the larger hotels like the Dorchester and the Savoy rather than the chains of Accor hotels. Dave Turnbull is the only specialist officer looking after the hotel sector (along with restaurants and supermarkets) for the T&G in London and he argues that extra resources are needed to organise the Accor hotels. Hotel workers have real power due to the geographical and temporal fixity of their work in the hospitality industry, but the union needs to build upon this by organising in future.
Likewise, in New Zealand, the Accor hotel chain is now very poorly unionised. The Service and Food Workers Union of Aotearoa (SFWA) has one collective agreement at the Novotel hotel in Auckland which has been in place for more than 10 years. This union agreement does incorporate a clause on trade union rights which allows union representatives to visit workers and hold meetings on site and the SFWA has tried to extend these rights elsewhere without any success. The IUF has raised violations of the TURA with regional and international tiers of management, but have not been able to back this up with organising activity. SFWA acknowledges that without a resource intensive organising campaign they will not be able to unionise workers in the Accor group and to-date, their organising team has concentrated on other targets in the hotel and services sector.
In Africa the IUF has raised awareness of the TURA with its affiliates and held a seminar for Accor unions in Accra, Ghana in December 1997. Representatives from Benin, the Ivory Coast, Egypt, Ghana, Guinea, Niger and Tanzania attended this meeting. The IUF then followed this up with two seminars for African Accor unions, the first in North Africa in February 2000, with participants from Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco, and the second, in West Africa in June 2000, with participants from Benin, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Gabon, Guinée, Mali, Niger and Sénégal. These seminars allowed union delegates to compare conditions and identify best practices across the region while also discussing ways in which the TURA might be put to best use. Likewise, the first ever meeting for IUF affiliates in Asia and the Pacific (including affiliates from Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines and Thailand) was held in February 1998. The IUF sought to inform delegates of the existence and purposes of the TURA with a view to encouraging new efforts at organisation.
(ii) Developing the international dimension of everyday trade union practice
When a local or national union is planning to organise a hotel in the Accor chain the IUF now likes to be notified and involved in developments as they unfold on the ground. In May 2000 Local 274 of the North American Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union (HERE) targeted the Sofitel in Philadelphia for a union organising campaign. This hotel employs 270 workers and the union had a fairly good response, getting a few workers to sign cards of support. However, local managers were very resistant to the union’s efforts. They employed attorneys who advised the company on how to resist the union, published anti-union literature, held captive audience meetings and excluded union representatives from the site.
The IUF intervened on behalf of Local 274, talking to the group human resources department in Paris, exposing the contradictions between company practice and the language of the TURA. However, workers were frightened off by management actions and the union has not been able to sustain the campaign alongside others ongoing in Philadelphia. Without ongoing activity by Local 274 at the Sofitel in Philadelphia, the IUF is relatively powerless to force the company to concede recognition. As an official from Local 274 explained, the TURA agreement reflects industrial relations practice in Europe and North American managers always resist union organising efforts regardless of the TURA. Local 274 plan to revive the Sofitel campaign in future and it is then that the TURA might come into play.
In a different way, the TURA has also been invoked in battles between the Australian Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers Union (LHMU) and Accor. Despite there being a national agreement between the union and employers covering the hotel sector in Australia, the 1996 Conservative Government introduced the means for employers to make non-union collective agreements with existing employees and to introduce Australian Workplace Agreements – which can violate nationally-negotiated standards – at any new operations. The Accor management (assisted by Andersen Consulting) saw this as an opportunity to undermine the national award and did so by setting up staff consultative committees to discuss new terms and conditions. During 1997 non-union agreements were reached in this way at Accor hotels in New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria and Tasmania and it was not until late 1998 and early 1999 that the LHMU started to catch up with the issue. By issuing comparative publicity to staff, the union has been able to highlight the damage done to terms and conditions and to urge employees to vote against the agreements on offer.
As part of its campaign the LHMU was also able bring the TURA into play. The union accused the company of breaking the terms of the TURA by violating nationally-negotiated agreements and by undermining the LHMU in the process. The union involved both the national trade union federation (the Australian Council of Trade Unions, ACTU) and the IUF in writing to the company to protest about the violation of nationally and internationally negotiated agreements. In addition, however, the LHMU was also able to develop a very positive relationship with the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (the CFMEU) which was being denied access to Accor construction sites for the purposes of union organisation. The two unions worked together to threaten Accor’s ambitious expansion plans in Australia and to demand that the company should use union labour in the construction of over 250 new hotels, and recognise the national award and the activity of the LHMU in their chains.
The two unions held joint demonstrations at a number of Accor’s new building sites to highlight their concerns and to increase pressure on the company to respond. As a result, the Accor management signed up to a Memorandum of understanding regarding industrial relations between Accor Asia Pacific, the ACTU, the LHMU and the CFMEU in October 1999. This Memorandum ensures compliance with the TURA and formally recognises the role played by the LHMU in representing Accor employees in Australia. To illustrate the strength of the memorandum, item four declares that:
ACCOR and LHMU agree to engage in a relationship building exercise to develop collective arrangements for ACCOR properties which balance ACCOR needs of efficiency, flexibility and commercial sustainability with employee needs of fairness, opportunity and beneficial wages, conditions and benefits outcomes. ACCOR and LHMWU will concentrate their efforts in the first instance to such an exercise at the Homebush (NSW) and other properties where negotiations are already underway between the LHMW and ACCOR … The process of developing and implementation of such agreement will provide examples for other properties that may be successful over time in establishing a new consensus in relations between the union and employers in the hospitality industry.
In item 5 the company also agrees not to pursue its policy of introducing non-union or Australian Workplace Agreements for new employees during the following 18 months and any future decisions will be made following a review of this agreement. The LHMU has successfully responded to Accor’s anti-union policies in Australia while also reinforcing the terms of the TURA.
In recent years, the LHMU has also moved additional resources and personnel into organising and it aims to foster activism in each Accor hotel. While the national award has helped to protect terms and conditions in the industry, unionisation has traditionally been low (especially beyond room servicing), labour turnover is high, casual employment often reaches 50% of all staff and many of the workers are from immigrant groups. As far as Tim Ferrari (Assistant National Secretary) is concerned, the existence of the TURA and the IUF “helps to support activism and organising work, but in and of itself, it is no substitute for it. We see it as one element in a range of tools that can be useful.” The LHMU has prioritised fostering activism at each local hotel in the Accor group to ensure that the company is not able to by-pass the union during its expansion programme in future. Indeed, as a result of its success with the national memorandum and by exploiting the opportunities of the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, the LHMU has signed a very detailed agreement with managers at the new Ibis hotel at Sydney Airport. This hotel is the first ‘2003 style’ Ibis hotel to open in Australia. The union and management are seeking to open the hotel with a workplace culture that fosters employee involvement, excellent training, improved pay and conditions, union recognition and facilities for trade union duties. As this chain of hotels is further developed across the country, the LHMU will seek to replicate this agreement. By informing – and where necessary involving – the IUF in such developments, the union will also seek to spread best practice to other parts of the world.
(iii) Intervening to support union organising on the ground
As has been discussed with regard to developments in North America, Australia, New Zealand and the UK, the TURA allows the IUF to get involved in local trade unionism, and when necessary, to intervene more directly. However, in at least two cases outlined below, the TURA has also made a real difference to the outcome of union organising campaigns.
In New York, the Hotel and Motel Trades Council (which includes a number of different unions in the sector) had a written, but not legally binding, neutrality agreement with the management at the Novotel hotel outlining procedures for union organising. Following a city-wide strike to defend the hotel trade agreement in 1985, however, the Accor management developed a much more hostile approach to union organisation. When HERE Local 6 officials returned to the Novotel to continue their organising efforts, the managers evicted them from the canteen and threw them off the premises. In reneging on the pre-existing gentleman’s agreement, the management forced Local 6 to undertake an official National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election to get legal recognition as the collective bargaining representative of the employees. When it came to the vote, the local Accor management employed anti-union consultants, held captive audience meetings, sacked activists and intimated the workforce as much as possible. Not surprisingly, Jim Donovan (Director of Organizing for the New York Hotel and Motel Trades Council and Executive Vice Principal of HERE Local 6) reports that the company “beat the hell out of us and the union went on to organise other hotels in the city.”
It was not until 7 years later, in 1994, that workers from the Novotel came back to the union to try organising again. A fairly large Organising Committee that was actively supported by full time union staff ensured a NLRB election victory by just one vote (from a workforce of about 120 workers).[6] Despite the union victory, however, local management refused to accept this result. As the union had financed a class action law suit against the company for breaking fair labour standards in respect to overtime pay as part of the campaign, Accor managers argued that workers had been bribed to support the union during the vote! This legal case moved from the regional NLRB to Washington DC, and once that body had found in favour of the union, Accor appealed again to the Circuit Court in Washington DC. The process was set to rumble on for years and by this time the hotel workers at the Novotel in New York had been waiting more than 10 years for a union recognition agreement. To register their frustration about the time, effort and resources involved in this legal debacle, Local 6 got 75% of the staff at the hotel to sign a petition asking management to drop their legal appeal, to recognise the union and stop wasting company money on lawyers.
Meanwhile, Local 6 had a phone call from the IUF, alerting them to the provisions of the TURA, and asking if it could help in this case. As Jim Donovan puts it “I was dubious about it. It seemed kind of exotic! A vague, broad agreement. It was foreign. It didn’t seem like any use in the legal courts of America.” Yet to explore the possibilities, Jim and a colleague went to the Accor EWC meeting in Geneva during May 1997 with a view to raising the case with the management and EWC delegates from Accor. This visit gave Local 6 the opportunity to shatter the negative picture being presented by the managers in New York. Jim and his colleague were able to convince the European managers that the North American strategy was a disaster. Even if the legal case could be won by Accor they would still need to hold another union election, and would end up having to deal with Local 6 of the HERE. In response, Accor’s management appointed three new people to lead their operations in North America, and they promptly declared their intention to start negotiating with the HERE. Moreover, as part of their negotiations with the company, Local 6 decided to include the new New York Sofitel in the discussions. The plans to build this hotel had been announced at the EWC meeting and Local 6 sought to sign an agreement before the hotel had even been built. A dispute that stretched back to the mid-1980s was thus successfully resolved with the intervention of the IUF and senior management, and to top it all, Local 6 a got union contract with the Sofitel as well as the Novotel, covering at least 400 workers in the two hotels.
For Jim Donovan, the up-scaling of union contacts to the IUF, and from the IUF to the senior management of the company, proved critical to their success. As he puts it “The IUF gave us the ability to run round the local managers who had their careers tied up in a stupid decision.” Of course, organising workers on the ground was fundamental to even having a campaign, but once underway, the TURA allowed the international scale to be mobilised in their support. North American workers face particular difficulty with hostile managers and the TURA, the IUF and the EWC gave Local 6 a route to the top of the management hierarchy in order to secure a more measured response.
HERE Local 75 in Toronto, Canada, has had similar call on the TURA to support local organisation. Moreover, in echoes of the Australian case, recent government actions have made it more difficult to organise workers. Since 1994 the Conservative administration in Ontario has sought to mirror the US system, introducing ballots and allowing employers the opportunity to intimidate workers and drag out the process of recognition. In this context, the union has sought to organise four Novotel hotels in the city. Those at the airport (55 workers) and the city centre (70 workers) were successfully organised in 1994 and 1999 respectively, and those at North York and Mississauga have yet to secure union contracts (in the former case the ballot was tied 36-36 and in the latter, they found it hard to build up employee support). During 1997, the management hired anti-union consultants (Platz and Associates) to resist union organising efforts at North York and the manager of this hotel wrote to all staff telling them that unions don’t improve working conditions or benefits and that they just involve paying dues and going on strike. The anti-union materials issued by this manager and his consultants played a part in the tied election result. Such violations of the TURA were raised with Accor’s HR Director in Paris but there was little that could be done about the ballot result.
Meanwhile, the Accor management at the Airport Novotel hotel had also increased their confrontational approach to Local 75 during the second contract negotiations. Managers sought to push the union to accept a final offer that was less than that on offer at non-union hotels in the chain and even threatened to lock out union members who would not agree. The union had no choice but to take on the company and its anti-union campaign, encouraging union members to resist management threats and refuse the inferior terms. For Paul Clifford (President-Administrator of Local 75), the way the union could invoke the TURA and involve the IUF in this campaign was very important to the confidence workers felt on the ground. Indeed, at a union caucus during the final negotiations over the airport Novotel contract, the IUF General Secretary, Ron Oswald, was able to speak directly to the three employees leading the union side of the bargaining process. These representatives felt reassured by the intervention of the IUF and they felt better able to resist the confrontational managers at the hotel. Moreover, following Ron’s intervention to head office in Paris, the local managers backed down and decided to make a better agreement with the union. While the strength of the local membership was key to this decision, Paul Clifford feels that the TURA helped to “get more than we would have done with just workers’ strength.”
In Toronto, HERE is looking at ways in which it can implement the TURA in the region, using it in negotiations at the airport or downtown to spread effective organisation to other parts of the group (as was done with the Sofitel in New York). As Paul Clifford explained, “fear is the biggest obstacle to organising. People get fired and it scares people. So if the TURA could be extended to reinforce workers rights across the company in Ontario, Canada or even North America, the union would be in a much stronger position to organise all Accor workers with spill over effects to other hotels.”
The cases cited above illustrate the ways in which the international dimension can come into play to foster and support local trade union organising efforts. Although it has not been possible to collect any original evidence, the IUF similarly assisted a union organising effort at the Manado Novotel in Indonesia during February 1999. Management later reneged on the agreement and sacked four union representatives after a strike. The IUF has raised this case with Accor’s HR Director and the EWC and just as in other locations, the IUF is seeking to support local trade union organisation.
(iv) Fostering internationalism amongst the workforce
In many parts of the world, the hotel sector is staffed by immigrants, many of whom have traditions and experiences of union organisation that move with them as they travel to a new home. By integrating the international dimension into everyday union organising and practice in the Accor chain, the TURA is helping to awaken the latent cosmopolitanism of staff in the sector. As Paul Clifford in Toronto puts it: “To organise service workers you need to ignite the imagination of immigrant communities and international solidarity can do this.” Rather than assuming that the international dimension is too far away and remote from the everyday detail of trade unionism, Clifford suggests that it is the international scale that can help ignite interest in the very act of organising and participating in the union. The TURA can act as a bridge from workers in one place to those in another and thus help to reinforce the message of organisation.
Moreover, for workers who have already travelled across the world to end up working in a hotel, servicing other workers who come from different locations, the idea of internationalism is not an alien concept.[7] Just as the hotel industry has to be open to other cultures, so too, the unions involved can embrace a progressive cosmopolitanism as a critical part of their strategy. The TURA can reinforce a celebration of the cultural diversity and rich geographical heritage of hotel workers, igniting the internationalism of their experience. Indeed, Local 75 in Toronto has made much of this cultural heritage in their recent interventions around Toronto’s bid for the 2008 Summer Olympics, using the bid as an opportunity to increase the profile of hotel workers and push for improved wages and conditions (Tufts, 2001). The TURA is thus assisting this recognition of the power of cosmopolitanism by embracing labour internationalism in very practical ways.
Concluding remarks
The TURA between Accor and the IUF demonstrates the importance of bargaining for space for workers to organise in the global economy. Although many workers already have the right to join unions on paper, in practise, there are many obstacles put in the way of such organisation. Reaffirming and extending the right to organise through a union-negotiated international framework agreement provides a mechanism to support local organisation and prevent the violation of workers rights. The Accor-IUF agreement has allowed the IUF to open doors for local affiliates to try and extend trade union organisation and has helped to reinforce trade union organising efforts in Accor hotels.
In this regard, international framework agreements between trade unions and TNCs are a robust way of enforcing corporate responsibility in the global economy. Most codes of conduct endorse the right of workers to join unions, but in practise, the code does nothing to actively support unionisation. If violations are identified they can be used in corporate campaigns, but the trade unions have to act from the outside to defend and extend workers’ rights. In contrast, an international framework agreement like the Accor-IUF TURA, gives trade unions the power to monitor corporate behaviour and act upon any violation of workers’ rights during organising campaigns. As such, international framework agreements are a much more powerful way to reinforce economic justice alongside processes of globalisation.
However, the examples outlined in this paper demonstrate that the TURA is only a small part of a bigger equation. Without active local trade union organisation, the TURA has made no difference to the exercise of trade union rights in the Accor hotels. In the UK and New Zealand, for example, the trade unions responsible for organising workers in the hotel sector have not targeted Accor chains and without such efforts, the TURA is largely cosmetic. In contrast, unions in Australia, Indonesia and North America have been able to integrate the TURA into their organising activities in Accor hotels. Indeed, the TURA has allowed the unions to develop a multi-scalar approach to organising, combining a focus on local hotel workers – and in the case of Australia, on preserving a nationally-negotiated agreement – with the active support of the IUF. In instances where local managers have violated the spirit of the TURA, as in North America by hiring anti-union consultants and refusing to respect ballot results, in Indonesia by sacking strike leaders and in Australia by seeking to undermine nationally-negotiated agreements, the IUF has intervened directly by contacting the group human resources department in Paris. The IUF has thus been able to offer concrete support to those organising on the ground. Moreover, in the case of New York and Toronto, this intervention has been decisive in shaping the outcome of local disputes.
In this context, the Accor-IUF TURA allows trade union affiliates to develop a spatially sophisticated approach to organising; developing specific activities and interventions at a variety of scales. As is illustrated by developments in Australia, a union might be fostering local organisation alongside efforts to defend national agreements that might involve alliances with other national unions, the national confederation of trade unions and a global trade union body. As such, this type of intervention echoes much recent academic literature about the scalar implications of economic change for people and place (see Dicken et al., 2000, 95):
[A] distinctive feature of contemporary capitalism is its ability to operate on multiple scales, but none of these scales should, in themselves, be considered a privileged level of analysis … Scales – including the body, neighbourhood, nation-state, region and globe – are mutually constitutive parts of a globalising economy.
Rather than assume that the international level becomes more important than the local and national in a global economy, it is argued that social actors have to develop a multi-scalar approach in order to tackle the challenges of globalisation. In organising workers in the hotel sector, for example, there is no substitute for local organising and if possible, for defending such activity with national agreements. However, should those workers be part of a TNC, there is also scope for using an international framework agreement as an extra lever in supporting such activity and even in ensuring the activity is a success (for the scalar politics of trade union activity in relation to the Liverpool Dockers dispute see Castree, 2000, and the GM-UAW strike, see Herod, 2000, 2001).
Whereas trade union internationalism has traditionally involved appealing for financial, emotional and industrial support for workers in a dispute, an international framework agreement allows global union federations to get much more involved in active negotiations with corporate managers on workers’ behalf. This approach allows global union federations to develop a bargaining relationship with managers at the head office of a TNC, rather than having to respond indirectly through local affiliates and international campaigns. In the case of the Accor-IUF TURA, the IUF has access to the group human resources department and it can intervene in cases where workers’ rights are not being respected. In this way, the IUF has greater practical significance to workers on the ground.
There is the potential to build on existing relationships between union members within TNCs which have often built up since the 1970s, to develop a more concrete and meaningful form of trade union internationalism through international framework agreements. Such activity will only benefit those workers employed directly (or indirectly if the IFA extends to subcontractors) by TNCs but it also illustrates the importance of a rights-based approach to the struggle for economic justice in the global economy (see also Ewing, 2000). Whatever rhetoric is adopted by corporations in their codes of conduct, or by campaigners in their battle against capitalist globalisation, it is critically important that workers have the right to organise on the ground. The endorsement and extension of workers’ rights to organise can ensure that globalisation is humanised in ways that empower, rather than further disempower, those working at the most exploitative end of the global economy. Moreover, rather than building campaigns around what Northern activists assume is best for workers in the South, the international framework approach allows workers everywhere to decide what is best for themselves. The principle of self-organisation underlies these agreements, and although global union federations can encourage and support local organising efforts, the implementation of an international agreement depends upon unions and workers deciding to act. When they do so, an international framework agreement can play a pivotal role in ensuring success. Moreover, it can provide a platform from which to build alliances with other social movements to fight for workers rights in a global economy.
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NOTES
[1] The research presented in this paper is part of a larger project exploring the future of the trade union movement in the UK, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (grant number R000271020).
[2] In similar vein, the Prince of Wales Business Leaders Forum in the UK has launched the Human Capitalism Campaign to promote responsible business practice. Membership of the Forum demands that companies endorse seven action points which include social standards, community work and environmental protection. There are at least 60 corporate members of this initiative including BP, Shell, Levi Strauss, Rio Tinto, Coca Cola and Toyota (Financial Times, 2000).
[3] By global federations of trade unions I am referring to the various International Trade Secretariats that unite national and local affiliates in different industrial sectors. Examples include the International Metal Workers Federation (IMF), the International Federation of Building and Woodworkers (IFBWW), the International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers’ Unions (ICEM), the International Transport Federation (ITF), Public Services International (PSI) and Union Network International (UNI) which represents clerical, office and service workers. There are 9 such global union federations and they work alongside the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (the ICFTU) which is the umbrella body representing national trade union bodies.
[4] Only 3% of the hundreds of corporate codes of conduct now in place have the facility for independent monitoring, 59% have some form of internal monitoring and some 38% make no mention of monitoring at all (see European Works Councils Bulletin, 2000a, 16, 2000c).
[5] This research was completed with the support of the IUF. Following an interview with General Secretary Ron Oswald and the officer responsible for the TURA Patrick Dalban-Moreynas, I was given the names of key contacts involved in organising workers in Accor hotels in North America, Australia, New Zealand, the UK and Indonesia and arranged to telephone them to discuss their experiences in more detail. In particular, I focused on the state of organising in the country and the role that the IUF and the TURA had played in supporting that work. In the case of the UK I was able to interview a Dave Turnbull from the Transport and General Workers’ Union who has responsibility for organising hotel workers in London. I also used secondary literature from the IUF and was thus able to glean limited information about the situation in Africa and Asia-Pacific. Unfortunately, I was unable to make contact with the IUF representative in Indonesia and have again relied upon secondary sources. I am also very grateful to Dan Gallin, previous General Secretary of the IUF, for his comments on a draft of this paper.
[6] At the election on 24 October 1994 the vote was 70 for the union, 56 against, 1 voided and 10 challenged ballots. The union thus had 51.47% of the valid votes cast.
[7] As an example, the 7 hotel workers being trained by the T&G in January 2001 to be accredited representatives for their colleagues were Italian, Egyptian, Irish, Eastern European and English.