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12 December, 2000The metalworkers' database report is the fruit of a close cooperation between the International Metalworkers' Federation (IMF) and the European Metalworkers' Federation (EMF) and affiliated organisations.
BY DAVID FOWLER
By the time this issue of METAL WORLD reaches the desks of the IMF leadership, most will have already received a formidable 230-page document entitled "Collective Bargaining Agreements -- A Database Report."
Because of the many tasks that the IMF is called upon to perform today, i.e. human rights, international solidarity campaigns and other high-profile activities, bread-and-butter issues of collective bargaining like wages and working hours, for instance, get less publicity. Yet they continue to be an essential part of IMF services to its members.
Proof of this, if ever proof was needed, is the continuing demand and interest for another IMF publication, "The Purchasing Power of Working Time," which contains information much in this same vein.
Although IMF officers may not today be called from Geneva to participate in actual bargaining sessions, rare as this has happened in the past, the present day size of IMF membership, the many languages and complexities of national custom and legislation make this impossible. Yet, the need for international experience and feedback grows and remains an essential and often critical factor in negotiations, while the demand for knowledge on conditions in other plants and in other countries seems unlimited.
This has been the subject of numerous discussions in IMF meetings with the focus on how to access and disseminate knowledge, using all the possibilities of information technology and data on the collective bargaining results of metalworkers for metalworkers in all countries of the world.
This information takes on a new significance if one considers United Nations' targets at the recent Millennium Summit meeting when world leaders pledged to halve the number of the world's people living on less than $1.00 a day by the year 2015.
Although it is very unlikely that metalworkers would be earning less than the symbolic $1.00 a day, and certainly not in an IMF affiliate, increasing purchasing power in many developing countries is a major goal of IMF unions. The idea that workers should be able to buy what they produce is still very much a guiding principle.
The metalworkers' database report is above all the fruit of a close cooperation between the IMF, the European Metalworkers' Federation and affiliated organisations. Both Internationals worked closely together during several months to establish a database which would provide a comparative overview of collective bargaining agreements worldwide. Of course at this early stage information has still to be provided but already material supplied, covering many key countries, is not a bad start.
Primer for a global economy
The commonly accepted consequences of the globalisation of the economy, that capital can be transferred at the touch of a button, services consumed in industrialised countries can be developed and delivered in Third World countries and vice versa, and many manufactured goods can be made anywhere, have enhanced the need for information from and by all IMF affiliates regarding wages and working conditions of metalworkers in all the corners of the world.
One does not have to be an economist to know that the costs of production are linked to trade and world markets. Moreover, the endless search by multinational corporations for production sites with the lowest labour costs puts workers' representatives who do not have the necessary bargaining data at their fingertips at a significant disadvantage. The IMF database will, we hope, go a long way to filling this gap.
Statistics, comments and figures
In essence, the IMF database is a long report in tabular form -- no graphics, no pictures, no conclusions, just the raw material for making decisions.
The opening table, "General information for the metal industry for 1999," for 51 countries, covers employment and degree of unionisation. See Table 1.
The USA, as might be expected, has the highest number of workers in the metal industry, at 8.8 million, with organisation (18.4%) slightly higher than the figure for the economy generally (15.4%). Japan with 6.4 million metalworkers has a significantly higher figure for organisation, both in the metal industry (29.2%) and in the economy as a whole (22.4%). Germany, with fewer workers -- 4.4 million in the metal industry, has a higher density of union membership at 38%, compared to 31% for all industries.
A glance at a developing country, India for instance, with a total employment in the metal industry of around 3 million, shows a strong trade union representation at around 30% of the workers with the strength of the union around them, compared to only 8% in industry generally.
The laurels for a high degree of organisation must go to the Ukraine (98%), Belarus, Sweden and Finland (90%), Austria and Cyprus (85%). High scores are also achieved by Brazil and Belgium and some other Latin American countries.
The closure of many plants in the rust belts
It would be interesting to speculate on reasons why sometimes smaller countries and also developing countries can achieve high rates of organisation, while in some industrialised countries with a strong tradition of trade union activity, membership stagnates. This is due, in part no doubt, to the closure of many plants in the rust belts with a strong trade union tradition and the relocation of industries in many other parts of the world.
The high density of organisation in the East European countries probably has roots in the custom of union membership as a condition of employment.
Labour laws also affect organisation with some industries declared out of bounds for trade union recruitment. In Malaysia, for instance, the IMF has been involved in a long and bitter struggle to allow unions to organise in the electronics sector.
Breakdown into seven sections
As trade union membership continues to be an IMF priority with the Congress mandate in the Action Programme "to organise the unorganised", there is little doubt that the metalworkers' database will provide an essential service in identifying areas which need special attention.
Following the table on employment and density of trade union membership comes the breakdown into seven sections. These cover the various sectors of the metal industry, and deal with agreement classification and coverage; wages and inflation; minimum wages; time off and working hours; shiftwork and breaks; overtime; new working time arrangements and important changes in newly negotiated agreements bringing contracts up to date by including recently negotiated changes.
Sectors covered are basic metals (iron and steel, aluminium, copper, etc.); fabricated metal products, machinery and equipment; office, computing, electrical and electronic machinery and equipment; motor vehicles and parts; shipbuilding, repairing and breaking; aircraft and spacecraft and others.
What's in an agreement
Probably one of the most interesting aspects of the opening tables, classification and coverage of agreements is the insight they give into the number of workers involved in the different sectors, their sex and how many are covered by the collective agreement.
Curiously, for instance in the sector where one would expect a majority of women workers - office, computing, electrical and electronic machinery and equipment - male workers still predominate. On the other hand, a surprising number of women are employed, for instance, in the Russian basic metal industries where heavy manual work is required.
Wage comparisons should of course be treated with some caution. A better method of arriving at conclusions is to consider them in conjunction with the IMF's publication "The Purchasing Power of Working Time," already mentioned.
One area of special interest for comparisons might be between the European Union countries faced with the introduction of the Euro.
A common currency can of course make quite a difference by simplifying the work of comparing benefits.
Provision for adjustments due to increases in the cost of living also appears to be fairly prevalent.
Trade union negotiators looking for novel ways to increase earnings should pay particular attention to the data given on other types of remuneration.
From holiday supplements of 100% in Austria to vacation bonus for many countries, through profit-sharing schemes in Brazil, Chile and Finland, among others to a straightforward bonus in Canada and Japan -- all seem to indicate a trend increasingly towards payments outside wage scales. Tool allowances (Australia) and housing allowances (Hungary), an employer's contribution to a tax deductible savings scheme (Germany) are among the more unusual.
Working hours
Working hours are another collective bargaining priority. Targeted in the IMF Action Programme, this is an area which will continue to claim very close attention and was the subject of a major IMF world conference in recent years.
Recent legislation in France brought the working week down from 39 to 35 hours from January 1 this year, for companies with more than 20 employees.
A close look at the material collected in the survey clearly shows a global goal of more leisure time with fewer working hours, either each week or each year. The union fight, whether by legislation or collective bargaining, is a permanent challenge.
That the struggle will not be an easy one is brought out by the example of the USA. In its Labor Day message this year, the IMF-affiliated International Association of Machinists called on its members "not to work, to relax and do nothing." Deploring the fact that American workers average only 12 paid vacation days per year, the union pointed out that Italians get 42, Germans 35 and French and British, on average, have 28 days.
Forced overtime in the US
According to the US Economic Policy Institute's report "The State of Working America," 4.5 weeks of work a year have been added to the average family's schedule in the past decade through second and third jobs, overtime, part-time work and "temping" (temporary work). Americans, says the IAM, are locked in a desperate, decades-long attempt to continue providing for their families.
During the past 30 years, real wages, family incomes have barely kept up with rising prices. Incomes would have fallen without the added hours.
Many workers in the US are complaining about forced overtime. Federal law makes companies obliged to pay hourly employees extra if they work more than 40 hours per week. Nothing but union contracts can stop companies from ordering workers to stay late or come in on weekends and from firing them if they do not.
Thus a glance at any of the conditions for workers in the US metal industry in the IMF document, whatever the job, amply bears out that it pays to be in the union.
Echoes of some reactionary employer attitudes can be found for instance in Turkey, where workers cannot, report the unions, in theory, be forced to work overtime without their consent. In practice, under threat of dismissal, they have no choice.
Unions in Mauritius, moreover, report that overtime as it appears in the Labour Act is not compulsory in the metal industry; in Export Processing Zones, however, overtime of 10 hours a week is obligatory.
Changes in the newly negotiated agreements
Although it is difficult to make direct comparisons in the different countries, by and large it can be clearly seen that trade unions through various limits, contractual and legal, are doing their utmost to restrict excessive overtime.
The database survey ends with a summary of other important changes in the newly negotiated agreements. These cover a whole range of new developments, from guarantees of 100% continued wage payments in case of sickness (Germany), additional weekly compensation leave of 18 minutes (Sweden), and stronger requirements under the job security programme to hire new workers in the event of attrition (USA).
In a different vein, Romanian unions have managed to secure agreement that, in order to benefit from the provisions of the collective agreement, non-organised workers must pay a fee to the representative union that is the equivalent of union dues. Malaysian workers have won a clause on new technology that, whenever high tech machinery is introduced by management, workers must be given adequate training for their new job.
Where do we go from here
Given the bewildering number of collective bargaining contracts covering almost every aspect of working life in a multiplicity of languages, this introduction can only serve to whet the appetite, and in the words of the advertising copywriter, affiliates wishing to know more should lose no time in procuring a copy of the IMF document.
Now that the groundwork has been laid, there still remains the task of filling the gaps and keeping the material up to date. Please help the IMF to do this. The success of the whole enterprise depends on affiliates playing an active part in collecting and providing accurate information promptly.
The IMF Database Report on Collective Bargaining Agreements is now a reality. If it gives a new impetus to achieving trade union goals, opens new avenues for negotiation and provides a useful tool in meeting the challenges of globalisation, then the effort will have proved more than worthwhile.
Because of the many tasks that the IMF is called upon to perform today, i.e. human rights, international solidarity campaigns and other high-profile activities, bread-and-butter issues of collective bargaining like wages and working hours, for instance, get less publicity. Yet they continue to be an essential part of IMF services to its members.
Proof of this, if ever proof was needed, is the continuing demand and interest for another IMF publication, "The Purchasing Power of Working Time," which contains information much in this same vein.
Although IMF officers may not today be called from Geneva to participate in actual bargaining sessions, rare as this has happened in the past, the present day size of IMF membership, the many languages and complexities of national custom and legislation make this impossible. Yet, the need for international experience and feedback grows and remains an essential and often critical factor in negotiations, while the demand for knowledge on conditions in other plants and in other countries seems unlimited.
This has been the subject of numerous discussions in IMF meetings with the focus on how to access and disseminate knowledge, using all the possibilities of information technology and data on the collective bargaining results of metalworkers for metalworkers in all countries of the world.
This information takes on a new significance if one considers United Nations' targets at the recent Millennium Summit meeting when world leaders pledged to halve the number of the world's people living on less than $1.00 a day by the year 2015.
Although it is very unlikely that metalworkers would be earning less than the symbolic $1.00 a day, and certainly not in an IMF affiliate, increasing purchasing power in many developing countries is a major goal of IMF unions. The idea that workers should be able to buy what they produce is still very much a guiding principle.
The metalworkers' database report is above all the fruit of a close cooperation between the IMF, the European Metalworkers' Federation and affiliated organisations. Both Internationals worked closely together during several months to establish a database which would provide a comparative overview of collective bargaining agreements worldwide. Of course at this early stage information has still to be provided but already material supplied, covering many key countries, is not a bad start.
Primer for a global economy
The commonly accepted consequences of the globalisation of the economy, that capital can be transferred at the touch of a button, services consumed in industrialised countries can be developed and delivered in Third World countries and vice versa, and many manufactured goods can be made anywhere, have enhanced the need for information from and by all IMF affiliates regarding wages and working conditions of metalworkers in all the corners of the world.
One does not have to be an economist to know that the costs of production are linked to trade and world markets. Moreover, the endless search by multinational corporations for production sites with the lowest labour costs puts workers' representatives who do not have the necessary bargaining data at their fingertips at a significant disadvantage. The IMF database will, we hope, go a long way to filling this gap.
Statistics, comments and figures
In essence, the IMF database is a long report in tabular form -- no graphics, no pictures, no conclusions, just the raw material for making decisions.
The opening table, "General information for the metal industry for 1999," for 51 countries, covers employment and degree of unionisation. See Table 1.
| Country | Employment | Rate of unionization (%) | |
| national | metal industry | ||
| Argentina | 220,000 | 40.0 | 80.0 |
| Australia | 169,100 | 28.1 | 40.0 |
| Austria | 219,421 | 50.0 | 85.0 |
| Belarus | 148,000 | 92.0 | 90.0 |
| Belgium | 237,992 | 55.0 | 75.0 |
| Brazil | n.a | 40.0 | 80.0 |
| Bulgaria | 240,000 | 40.0 | 60.0 |
| Canada | 565,000 | 35.0 | 45.0 |
| Chile | 450,000 | 12.0 | 25.0 |
| Colombia | 60,000 | 6.0 | 20.0 |
| Croatia | 75,800 | n.a | 80.5 |
| Cyprus | 8,000 | 80.0 | 85.0 |
| Czech Rep. | 540,000 | 35.0 | 61.0 |
| Denmark | 181,500 | 65.0 | 65.0 |
| Ecuador | 25,000 | 9.0 | 32.00 |
| Finland | 192,000 | 90.0 | 90.00 |
| France | 1,800,000 | 10.0 | n.a |
| Germany | 4,400,000 | 31.0 | 38.00 |
| Ghana | 5,000 | 5.8 | 1.0 |
| Greece | 163,000 | n.a | 40.0 |
| Hungary | 286,000 | 50.1 | 30.7 |
| India | 3,000,000 | 8.0 | 30.0 |
| Ireland | 92,000 | 48.0 | 65.0 |
| Israel | 150,000 | 35.0 | 27.0 |
| Ivory Coast | n.a | 80.0 | 60.0 |
| Japan | 6,350,000 | 22.4 | 29.2 |
| Kenya | 15,000 | 30.0 | 20.0 |
| Lithuania | 41,000 | 15.0 | 20.0 |
| Malaysia | 300,000 | 12.0 | 5.0 |
| Mauritius | 30,000 | 27.0 | 40.0 |
| Mexico | 1,600,000 | 60.0 | 80.0 |
| New Caledonia | 3,000 | 30.0 | 60.0 |
| Panama | 60,000 | 9.5 | 5.0 |
| Paraguay | 8,000 | 7.0 | 20.0 |
| Philippines | 980,000 | 5.0 | 2.0 |
| Romania | 700,000 | 75.0 | 80.0 |
| Russia | n.a | 62.0 | 80.0 |
| Singapore | 151,000 | 25.0 | 25.0 |
| Slovakia | 223,483 | n.a | 57.0 |
| Slovenia | 102,000 | 70.0 | 82.0 |
| South Africa | 700,000 | 35.0 | 47.0 |
| Sweden | 382,000 | 90.0 | 90.0 |
| Switzerland | 325,685 | 30.0 | 15.0 |
| Taiwan (ROC) | 1,080,000 | 40.0 | 9.4 |
| Thailand | n.a | 2.0 | n.a |
| Trinidad/Tobago | 5,000 | 9.0 | 40.0 |
| Tunisia | 22,000 | 25.0 | 25.0 |
| Turkey | 518,000 | 27.0 | 82.5 |
| Uganda | 136,000 | 38.0 | 55.0 |
| Ukraine | 1,500,000 | 96.0 | 98.0 |
| United States | 8,769,700 | 15.4 | 18.4 |
A glance at a developing country, India for instance, with a total employment in the metal industry of around 3 million, shows a strong trade union representation at around 30% of the workers with the strength of the union around them, compared to only 8% in industry generally.
The laurels for a high degree of organisation must go to the Ukraine (98%), Belarus, Sweden and Finland (90%), Austria and Cyprus (85%). High scores are also achieved by Brazil and Belgium and some other Latin American countries.
The closure of many plants in the rust belts
It would be interesting to speculate on reasons why sometimes smaller countries and also developing countries can achieve high rates of organisation, while in some industrialised countries with a strong tradition of trade union activity, membership stagnates. This is due, in part no doubt, to the closure of many plants in the rust belts with a strong trade union tradition and the relocation of industries in many other parts of the world.
The high density of organisation in the East European countries probably has roots in the custom of union membership as a condition of employment.
Labour laws also affect organisation with some industries declared out of bounds for trade union recruitment. In Malaysia, for instance, the IMF has been involved in a long and bitter struggle to allow unions to organise in the electronics sector.
Breakdown into seven sections
As trade union membership continues to be an IMF priority with the Congress mandate in the Action Programme "to organise the unorganised", there is little doubt that the metalworkers' database will provide an essential service in identifying areas which need special attention.
Following the table on employment and density of trade union membership comes the breakdown into seven sections. These cover the various sectors of the metal industry, and deal with agreement classification and coverage; wages and inflation; minimum wages; time off and working hours; shiftwork and breaks; overtime; new working time arrangements and important changes in newly negotiated agreements bringing contracts up to date by including recently negotiated changes.
Sectors covered are basic metals (iron and steel, aluminium, copper, etc.); fabricated metal products, machinery and equipment; office, computing, electrical and electronic machinery and equipment; motor vehicles and parts; shipbuilding, repairing and breaking; aircraft and spacecraft and others.
What's in an agreement
Probably one of the most interesting aspects of the opening tables, classification and coverage of agreements is the insight they give into the number of workers involved in the different sectors, their sex and how many are covered by the collective agreement.
Curiously, for instance in the sector where one would expect a majority of women workers - office, computing, electrical and electronic machinery and equipment - male workers still predominate. On the other hand, a surprising number of women are employed, for instance, in the Russian basic metal industries where heavy manual work is required.
Wage comparisons should of course be treated with some caution. A better method of arriving at conclusions is to consider them in conjunction with the IMF's publication "The Purchasing Power of Working Time," already mentioned.
One area of special interest for comparisons might be between the European Union countries faced with the introduction of the Euro.
A common currency can of course make quite a difference by simplifying the work of comparing benefits.
Provision for adjustments due to increases in the cost of living also appears to be fairly prevalent.
Trade union negotiators looking for novel ways to increase earnings should pay particular attention to the data given on other types of remuneration.
From holiday supplements of 100% in Austria to vacation bonus for many countries, through profit-sharing schemes in Brazil, Chile and Finland, among others to a straightforward bonus in Canada and Japan -- all seem to indicate a trend increasingly towards payments outside wage scales. Tool allowances (Australia) and housing allowances (Hungary), an employer's contribution to a tax deductible savings scheme (Germany) are among the more unusual.
Working hours
Working hours are another collective bargaining priority. Targeted in the IMF Action Programme, this is an area which will continue to claim very close attention and was the subject of a major IMF world conference in recent years.
Recent legislation in France brought the working week down from 39 to 35 hours from January 1 this year, for companies with more than 20 employees.
A close look at the material collected in the survey clearly shows a global goal of more leisure time with fewer working hours, either each week or each year. The union fight, whether by legislation or collective bargaining, is a permanent challenge.
That the struggle will not be an easy one is brought out by the example of the USA. In its Labor Day message this year, the IMF-affiliated International Association of Machinists called on its members "not to work, to relax and do nothing." Deploring the fact that American workers average only 12 paid vacation days per year, the union pointed out that Italians get 42, Germans 35 and French and British, on average, have 28 days.
Forced overtime in the US
According to the US Economic Policy Institute's report "The State of Working America," 4.5 weeks of work a year have been added to the average family's schedule in the past decade through second and third jobs, overtime, part-time work and "temping" (temporary work). Americans, says the IAM, are locked in a desperate, decades-long attempt to continue providing for their families.
During the past 30 years, real wages, family incomes have barely kept up with rising prices. Incomes would have fallen without the added hours.
Many workers in the US are complaining about forced overtime. Federal law makes companies obliged to pay hourly employees extra if they work more than 40 hours per week. Nothing but union contracts can stop companies from ordering workers to stay late or come in on weekends and from firing them if they do not.
Thus a glance at any of the conditions for workers in the US metal industry in the IMF document, whatever the job, amply bears out that it pays to be in the union.
Echoes of some reactionary employer attitudes can be found for instance in Turkey, where workers cannot, report the unions, in theory, be forced to work overtime without their consent. In practice, under threat of dismissal, they have no choice.
Unions in Mauritius, moreover, report that overtime as it appears in the Labour Act is not compulsory in the metal industry; in Export Processing Zones, however, overtime of 10 hours a week is obligatory.
Changes in the newly negotiated agreements
Although it is difficult to make direct comparisons in the different countries, by and large it can be clearly seen that trade unions through various limits, contractual and legal, are doing their utmost to restrict excessive overtime.
The database survey ends with a summary of other important changes in the newly negotiated agreements. These cover a whole range of new developments, from guarantees of 100% continued wage payments in case of sickness (Germany), additional weekly compensation leave of 18 minutes (Sweden), and stronger requirements under the job security programme to hire new workers in the event of attrition (USA).
In a different vein, Romanian unions have managed to secure agreement that, in order to benefit from the provisions of the collective agreement, non-organised workers must pay a fee to the representative union that is the equivalent of union dues. Malaysian workers have won a clause on new technology that, whenever high tech machinery is introduced by management, workers must be given adequate training for their new job.
Where do we go from here
Given the bewildering number of collective bargaining contracts covering almost every aspect of working life in a multiplicity of languages, this introduction can only serve to whet the appetite, and in the words of the advertising copywriter, affiliates wishing to know more should lose no time in procuring a copy of the IMF document.
Now that the groundwork has been laid, there still remains the task of filling the gaps and keeping the material up to date. Please help the IMF to do this. The success of the whole enterprise depends on affiliates playing an active part in collecting and providing accurate information promptly.
The IMF Database Report on Collective Bargaining Agreements is now a reality. If it gives a new impetus to achieving trade union goals, opens new avenues for negotiation and provides a useful tool in meeting the challenges of globalisation, then the effort will have proved more than worthwhile.