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4 August, 2005ICEM News release No. 28/2000
Global Companies Need Global Unions. So says a headline in the online edition of the Financial Times, over a guest article by Fred Higgs, General Secretary of the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM).
Global agreements are in the companies' own best interests, writes Higgs. "If they are to convince a sceptical public of their good intentions, the big global corporations will have to put some content into their ethics. They will also have to go beyond self-proclaimed and self-evaluated codes of conduct."
"All these agreements, both company-level and sectoral, will specify the unions' right to monitor implementation and to raise any breaches of the agreements with the global corporate management or the international industry federation," Higgs emphasises. "This is the crucial difference between a global agreement and a company's own code of conduct.
"To workers and the public, a global agreement gives the assurance that standards are being systematically monitored and raised," he points out. "To corporations, it gives credibility."
At the present stage of globalisation, the agreements will not be about pay, Higgs believes. Rather, they "will set a framework for global industrial relations in each company and each sector." They will also "ensure that corporations maintain the same high standards in all their operations as regards the protection of health, safety and the environment - a sphere in which regional variations are unjustifiable and unacceptable."
The ICEM already has a company-level global agreement with oil multinational Statoil and is currently in talks on a number of others. At the sectoral level, good progress has been made on an agreement with the chemical companies' international body ICCA, under which the ICEM would help to ensure that the chemical industry's Responsible Care programme really does deliver the highest health, safety and environmental standards worldwide.
"Our door is open," Fred Higgs concludes, "in the companies' interests as well as ours."
Global agreements are in the companies' own best interests, writes Higgs. "If they are to convince a sceptical public of their good intentions, the big global corporations will have to put some content into their ethics. They will also have to go beyond self-proclaimed and self-evaluated codes of conduct."
"All these agreements, both company-level and sectoral, will specify the unions' right to monitor implementation and to raise any breaches of the agreements with the global corporate management or the international industry federation," Higgs emphasises. "This is the crucial difference between a global agreement and a company's own code of conduct.
"To workers and the public, a global agreement gives the assurance that standards are being systematically monitored and raised," he points out. "To corporations, it gives credibility."
At the present stage of globalisation, the agreements will not be about pay, Higgs believes. Rather, they "will set a framework for global industrial relations in each company and each sector." They will also "ensure that corporations maintain the same high standards in all their operations as regards the protection of health, safety and the environment - a sphere in which regional variations are unjustifiable and unacceptable."
The ICEM already has a company-level global agreement with oil multinational Statoil and is currently in talks on a number of others. At the sectoral level, good progress has been made on an agreement with the chemical companies' international body ICCA, under which the ICEM would help to ensure that the chemical industry's Responsible Care programme really does deliver the highest health, safety and environmental standards worldwide.
"Our door is open," Fred Higgs concludes, "in the companies' interests as well as ours."