Article by William B. Gould IV
Throughout the industrialized world, the trade union movement has become increasingly concerned with a growing threat to the job security of union members, both on a nation-state level and internationally through its trade secretariats. This problem of job loss has become ever more perilous by virtue of the increasing number of both corporate conglomerates and multinational corporations whose interests and concern with profitability extend not only beyond a particular bargaining unit, but beyond national boundaries as well.
The American and European trade union movements seem to be approaching this problem in fundamentally different ways. While both have made headway in according unions rights of access to information that could have an impact upon job security, the Europeans have focused upon international or regional instruments as an adjunct to collective bargaining and labor law at the nation-state level to achieve this goal. The primary vehicles for European policy are found in the International Labor Organization (ILO) Tripartite Declaration of Principles Concerning Multinational Enterprises and Social Policy, as well as in the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises. Most recently, the European Trade Union Congress (ETUC) has lobbied effectively for the so-called Vredeling Initiative at the European Economic Community (EEC) level.
American trade unions, on the other hand, have made progress in gaining access to information in spite of the law relating to labor-management relations on this side of the Atlantic. Concession bargaining has forced unions to take a series of wage reductions in, for example, the automotive, steel, and airline industries, which have either been exposed to foreign competition or buffetted severely by deregulation. Ironically, concession bargaining has produced incursions upon previously established management prerogatives. For instance, in the 1983 Basic Steel Agreement, the major steel companies, in response to the United Steelworkers' concern that concessions would result in mergers in other industries which would not benefit those represented by the union, agreed to “apply the savings received from the moderations contained in this Agreement exclusively to the needs of the existing facilities covered by this Agreement.” The Agreement further stated that
[such] savings may be spent for capital equipment needed to modernize such existing plants or to preserve the working capital needs of such plants. The Company shall not use any of the savings it obtains from such moderations under this Agreement to invest in other business segments of the Company.
The companies further agreed that, as an administrative check, “[the] company shall provide annual adequate information to the Union on savings obtained, related capital expenditures and working capital changes to enable the Union to verify compliance with the obligations set forth herein.”
Similar agreements have been negotiated between the United Food and Commercial Workers and Armour Company, the River Rouge Steel Company and Local 600 of the United Auto Workers, the Woodworkers Union and Crown Zellerbach Corporation, and, on a more modified and generalized level, Uniroyal and the United Rubber Workers in their 1982 agreement. Indeed, Eastern Airlines, in its December 1983 concession agreement with the Transport Workers Union and the International Association of Machinists providing for wage and work rule concessions, agreed to allow “the unions . . . to review and make suggestions about the company's business plans and major capital expenditures before management recommendations are sent to the board of directors.”
While American trade unions have recognized the importance of gaining access to employers' financial information and have had some success in doing so in the context of concession bargaining, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), in administering the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), has failed to come to a similar conclusion, particularly with respect to corporate conglomerates and multinational corporations. This point is best illustrated by a comparison of the approaches taken by European and American labor law in dealing with the problem of union access to information.
About the Author
William B. Gould IV. Charles A. Beardsley Professor of Law, Stanford Law School.
Citation
58 Tul. L. Rev. 1322 (1984)