Multinational Enterprises
Multinational companies are becoming stronger than nation states. Generally, these international corporations are immune from the democratic controls which often limit the actions of national governments.
The UN has noted that more than half of world trade is produced by multinational companies and more than one third of world trade is composed of goods transfers within different branches of the same multinational corporations. Two thirds of all international transactions in goods and services combined are dependent on multinational company operations.
The increasingly free movement of capital allows corporations to transfer production without regard to national boundaries to wherever costs are low. Often production is outsourced or subcontracted to ever smaller units of production. Some of the largest and most powerful corporations have very few direct employees but they are able to maintain the required quantity and quality of production by franchise or subcontract arrangements around the world. It is at this level that the worst employment practices are found.
Therefore ITGLWF is committed to :
- promote cooperation between affiliates dealing with the same multinational enterprises;
- build an organising strategy throughout the operations of selected multinationals operating in the sector, including European, US, Taiwanese and Korean companies, which covers the operations in importing countries, as well as contracting, subcontracting and licensing operations;
- in conjunction with its regional organisations, develop a dialogue with multinational enterprises with a view to concluding international framework agreements relating to trade union organisation and collective bargaining as well as to information and consultation rights;
- promote the creation of world-wide company councils within individual multinational corporations;
- encourage affiliates to make use of framework agreements and codes of conduct as a tool for organising workers and improving working conditions;
- campaign to reduce the number of codes of conduct in operation, to ensure they are firmly grounded in the main Conventions of the ILO, are managed on a multi-stakeholder basis and are applied with the same intent as the ILO Conventions and that they include a system of implementation, internal monitoring and viable independent verification, with regular impact assessments;
- campaign to ensure that codes of conduct are not used as a substitute for effective labour legislation, nor as an alternative to union organisation;
- demand that companies externally sourcing their production provide full disclosure of their suppliers worldwide;
- campaign to make merchandisers and retailers responsible for the conditions under which goods they market are produced;
- campaign for changes to national and international company legislation which would require companies to take into account and publicly disclose their social, environmental and economic impacts with a view to securing a legally binding international framework on corporate responsibility.
