Events for ETI Members

RAISING THE STAKES
ETI AGM November 2002

Roundtable Workshop 4
Trade unions and companies

Chair:	David Croft, Head of Quality and Consumer Care, The Co-operative Group (CWS) Ltd
Speakers:	George Jaksch, Director Corporate Responsibility & Public Affairs, Chiquita Brian Revell, TGWU
Case Study:	Chiquita framework agreement with the IUF

Who participated

14 participants attended and amongst members, 8 companies, 2 Trade Unions and 1 NGO were represented. Staff from ETI Secretariat were also in attendance.

Key points from presentations

Presentation by George Jaksch and Brian Revell

IUF - COLSIBA - Chiquita Agreement was signed on June 14, 2001, by:

IUF - International Union of Food Workers
COLSIBA - Coordination of Latin American Banana Workers Unions Chiquita

and witnessed by Juan Somavía, ILO Director General

"We hope that this agreement will serve as a model for relations generally between international union organizations and transnational companies."
Ron Oswald, Secretary General, IUF

Chiquita's commitments

• Core ILO conventions
• Extend to suppliers
• Collaboration for improved worker health and safety
• Committee to review serious or systemic violations
• Commitment to negotiate in good faith
• Communicate in open, honest and straightforward manner

IUF - COLSIBA - Chiquita Agreement
The agreement facilitated a common understanding among company managers, union leaders and employees.

Benefits

• Avoid public international campaigns or anti-union retaliatory tactics
• Develop a common understanding of effective labor management relations
• Quality of products rose
• Productive, efficient and flexible work practices
• Quality of work life
• Social and environmental health of communities
• Success and sustainability of company
• Focus on continuous improvement
• Health, safety and well-being of workers and communities
• Dramatically different from traditional antagonistic concepts

Difficulties

• Unrealistic expectations, the agreement cannot replace local efforts.
• Communicating the purpose and mechanism of the agreement
• Transferring the spirit to local labour relations
• Suppliers - Persuasion v. Control

Successes

• Meetings with suppliers in Honduras and Nicaragua
• Union-management dialogue in Costa Rica
• Quicker resolution of Honduras strike
• Improved understanding - unions in EU political debate
• Worker health and safety pilot project
• Proposed joint training for managers and union leaders
• Improved stakeholder relationships
• IUF support for Chiquita's ETI membership
• Move from confrontation to dialogue

Lessons

• No successful Ethical Trading / Corporate Responsibility without trade union participation and support
• A framework agreement needs to be supported by dedicated effort and good communication
• The biggest challenge: Building that "Common Understanding"
• Cooperation + mutual benefits = A Better Future
• Framework Agreement - not easy, but the Right Decision
• Fair dealing and continuous improvement

Key issues arising

• Multi-nationals need to identify their own values and build them into business codes, then develop the code and then get agreement with trade unions.
• Trade unions recognise that maturity is required for developing framework agreements with trade unions, an initial recognition/relationship is valuable in helping this process.
• Unions are most needed where management is worst.
• Any training that is supported, recognised by, and participated in by union leaders has been more successful than other training.
• Involving unions is training offered to management has promoted better dialogue between management and trade unions (although it was a shock to some at the start).
• The process of ensuring the framework agreement is implemented on the ground has generated a number of lessons. Chiquita discussed how union representatives might be involved in their internal audit system and have had union representatives' shadow audits. This has been an entirely positive experience. The next step will be for trade union representatives to participate more fully in the process so union leaders are being trained as auditors.
• Collective voice of workers enables them to voice their concerns.
• Trade union organisation provides companies with a self-sustaining opportunity for on-going monitoring through a local support network.
• It can help to have a bonus scheme for managers linked to getting corporate responsibility systems going.
• There is ability to influence in the long-term through contractual arrangement.

Summing up/recommendations

• Understanding and complementing the role of governments, who draft laws, ratify conventions etc.
• How to address this with suppliers who are used short-term and where, therefore, influence is limited (it was suggested the contract itself is a tool)
• Supermarket power is enormous (particularly in relation to price); supermarkets should perhaps exercise restraint in trying to drive down prices.
• Structural issues in supply-chains present challenges. How can supermarkets engage with unions when they are a long way from the point of production? (Having dialogue between the extremes of the supply chain was seen as one way of assisting this).

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See also:

• ETI Annual Report 2001/2002 - "Raising the Stakes"
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• Events