Abstract
Introduction
As globalized production and markets continue to expand, challenges of transnational labour issues attract increased attention. Scholars call for an intensive agenda on transnational and multilevel labour governance (Keune and Marginson, 2013; Meardi and Marginson, 2014; Papadakis, 2011; Schuessler et al., 2019) inclusive of industrial relations, international human resource management (HRM), corporate social responsibility foci (Fransen, 2012; Jackson et al., 2018; Lévesque et al., 2018), and global value chain management (Barrientos et al., 2011; Gereffi et al., 2005). Global multinational companies (MNCs) persist in their establishment of governance structures to orchestrate the activities of diverse suppliers and set the rules of the field (Gereffi, 2018). Questions of global labour governance draw attention to key actors in MNC and labour interlocution and emerging institutions.
In response to global expansion of MNCs, labour actors have accelerated development of transnational labour institutions aimed to engage with global MNCs and to protect labour interests. The formation of Global Union Federations (GUFs) expressing demands for transnational social dialogue has seen the emergence over recent decades of transnational company agreements. These agreements, notably the Global Framework Agreement (GFA) with intended global reach, propose to contribute a significant intervention in the transnational governance arena. While formally addressed to and agreed at corporate headquarter (HQ) level, GFA enactment on the ground proposes multiple effects for transnational local workers. The GFA, which is formally a private governance initiative, navigates between and beyond formal legislative provisions and voluntary corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives on the part of corporate firms and their suppliers. It aims to set rules in generating robust social dialogue among transnational workers and company actors in, at minimum, protection of labour rights and standards and improving material and social benefits in wages and employment conditions.
The GFA, while often remarked as a Europe-bound project with little recognition in other advanced economies, notably the US, nonetheless attracts interest and gains adoption including by companies headquartered in Brazil, India and South Africa (Rehfeldt, 2018). More recent agreements, with the French chemical giant Solvay’s GFA (renewed 2017) regarded as exemplary, are more comprehensive and substantive than earlier agreements. Observers note that there can be a wide distance between the signing of an agreement and realization of its objectives (Niforou, 2014; Platzer and Rüb, 2014). Its private contractual nature has no (or little) recourse to statutory law. The agreement’s voluntarism and variably informed dispersion pose many and dynamic challenges to effectiveness (Bourque et al., 2021). Nonetheless, the GFA and its infrastructural malleability provides a global resource of potentiality for actor utility and localized application.
This article’s overarching concern is: how is regulatory effectiveness, intended in the GFA, brought about, sustained and advanced? We formally conceive regulatory effectiveness, in the context of private governance (discussed below), to refer to sustained constraint on capital imperatives for capital maximization, and optimized recognition of labour interest in socio-economic action. Effectiveness, more practically understood, refers to the dispersed acceptance of and compliance with rules, policies, standards and codes. More informally understood, regulatory effectiveness refers to actors’ expression of ‘how it’s working’ and what ‘it means for us’. It is multifaceted. The article draws on our empirical study of Germany-headquartered global MNCs in their Asia-Pacific entities that investigates transnational labour practices and social dialogue. The article contributes to debates on transnational labour governance in its discussion of how regulatory effectiveness of global agreements is brought about through the craft of diverse actors interacting in a transnational arena. Much debate (see below) usefully addresses issues of practical implementation and effects of the agreements. Our attention to what we identify as moral-political effectiveness, a notion which emerged from the field data and is explained below, assists understanding of ways actors engage with and locally legitimize and authoritatively enact corporate agreements toward more socially positive global labour relations. We show that concrete asymmetries of political-economy power are affected by attribution and expression of what we, on interpreting the data, theorize as moral-political authority (discussed below), and actor response to that authority. Discussion proceeds as follows: a contextual debate on the emergence of global labour governance and questions of private governance and multilevel governance is followed by discussion of transnational social dialogue and GFAs. From there, our Asia-Pacific field study is introduced, and a discussion of findings follows. Further questions are considered in conclusion.
Global labour governance
The acceleration of transnational economic activity has outpaced social institutional protection of societal and labour interests. Multiple and often severe asymmetries among regional economies expose the increased risk of global labour exploitation (LeBaron, 2020; Mückenberger, 2011). In recognition of those risks, labour actors, including prominently the International Labour Organization (ILO), pursue development of innovative responses. The ILO, following unsuccessful efforts to establish legally binding codes of conduct for MNCs, pursued a ‘soft’ intervention through its 1998 Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work – the ‘decent work’ agenda for global standards (ILO, 2022). It stimulated greater awareness of questions of global labour standards and rights. This assisted a politically oriented CSR interest prominent in liberal market economies to pressure MNCs to recognize social problems incurred in their actions that occur beyond the regulatory reach of states (Fransen, 2012; Lévesque et al., 2018). A range of CSR and multi-stakeholder initiatives, including the UN Global Compact and OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, include endorsement of the ILO’s core labour standards. The inability of national labour laws and voluntary CSR actions to enforce standards or sanctions (Bair and Palpacuer, 2015; Barrientos et al., 2011; Egels-Zandén, 2017) and the constraints on trade unions and freedom of association in much of the world continue to expose severe governance gaps. In the absence of robust formal law, prominently formally preferred in democratic societies, private governance undertakings have emerged.
Private governance concedes recognition of governance gaps and acknowledges that private regulation indicates a form of responsibility for, and capacity to respond to, externalities of private economic action. Non-state, private regulation includes multi-actor efforts to forge binding agreements between companies and unions such as the globally significant Bangladesh Accord following the 2013 Rana Plaza industrial disaster (Reinecke and Donaghey, 2015). Private regulation typically provides soft law that can stimulate further regulatory value, and enforcement (Lévesque et al., 2018; Papadakis, 2011. It also generates actor-initiated and sustained cooperation and learning. Private governance practices, in general, have to date produced patchy outcomes, and have attracted criticism for poor results in improvement in labour standards in global supply chains (Amengual and Kuruvilla, 2020; Kuruvilla, 2021; LeBaron, 2020).
In recognition of the challenges to democratic societies that private governance poses, debates in politics and law introduce a multilevel governance perspective. That approach, informed by evolving transnational institutions in the European Union (EU) (Allain-Dupré, 2020; Hooghe and Marks, 2001; Tortola, 2017), predominantly emphasizes state actors. It nonetheless opens intersection with private governance and transnational labour governance concerns. Scholars observe the ways in which EU governance initiatives have enabled multiple parties across judiciaries to participate in decision-making (Barbier et al., 2015; Keune and Marginson, 2013). For instance, the European Works Council (EWC) initiative and transnational company agreements that emerged in the 1990s illustrate the weaving of multiple relationships and negotiation of interdependencies as well as elements of experimentation (Keune and Marginson, 2013; Papadakis, 2011). The creation of intersecting hierarchical, lateral, networked and quasi-public relationships among established and new actors adds complexity and considerable scope for contesting and negotiating power and creating institutions for socio-economic governance. Industrial relations scholars pursue attention to networks and articulation of interests (Brandl et al., 2022; Haipeter et al., 2019; Helfen and Fichter, 2013).
We adopt a multilevel governance perspective and specifically apply it to governing the global MNC and its transnational labour relations. Our approach, with its interdisciplinarity and recognition of dynamism and evolution, enables sharp attention to ways in which socio-political stakeholders – prominently trade unions – participate in decisions that assist coordination of socio-economic objectives such as labour rights and interest expression in global MNCs. Multilevel governance can be understood, we contend, to refer to the distribution of authoritative decision-making across multiple levels and multiple actors. Our application of a multilevel approach refers not principally to geographic levels (although those are implied in global MNC action) but to forums of variously vertical, horizontal and heterogeneous coordinating relations that achieve decision-making with substantive regulatory effect.
A multilevel governance approach to the conventionally assumed private political-economic actor of the MNC recognizes, we contend, the global MNC as a particular form of non-state actor exerting significant transnational and public effect. Our approach recognizes the persistence of corporate hierarchical and lead network actor power within the corporate group even as bundles of operational decision-making capacity formally reside with legally discrete subsidiary companies. It recognizes, following Durkheim (1974), authority as a moral power in the midst of structural political-economic power. We highlight in our approach the actions of actors crafting and asserting moral authority – an authority that has no formal coercive capacity – to influence agenda, frame debates, set rules and shape multi-party action. In that action, a moral-political regulatory effectiveness occurs.
Global Union Federations (GUFs) are key actors in the multilevel governance arena. GUFs aim to advance and protect global labour interests (Cotton and Gumbrell-McCormick, 2012; Ford and Gillan, 2015) and to exert a governance effect on global MNCs and supply chains. Drawing on historical accomplishments of transnational EU institutions and agreements, such as European social dialogue and the EWC, GUF actors forge global development of transnational, or cross-border, social dialogue including transnational and global company agreements. Transnational social dialogue refers to interactions between workers’ representatives and employers such as negotiation (inclusive of bargaining), consultation, knowledge exchange and regulatory activities.
Global framework agreements
Global framework agreements (GFAs), extending from international framework agreements (for historical discussion see Telljohann et al., 2009), have emerged from transnational developments in regional economic relations, MNC expansion and trade union response. They are bilateral agreements negotiated and signed by global unions and MNC headquarter (or corporate-level) management and in some cases also signed by (HQ) country unions or works councils (e.g. IG Metall, EWC). GFAs promote codified regulation and formal bargaining rights and establish monitoring and compliance mechanisms. The first generation of international framework agreements was typically constrained to focus on gaining MNCs’ commitment to implement ILO core labour standards and recognition of unions and collective bargaining and workers’ safety (Hadwiger, 2015; Hammer, 2005; Schömann et al., 2008). Those early developments, which attracted criticism for disappointing outcomes (Fichter and McCallum, 2015; Niforou, 2014), have since the 2010s seeded increased demand, with notably more substantial content development, and capacity potential (ILO, 2018a; IndustriALL, 2014; Mustchin and Martínez Lucio, 2017). A second generation of GFAs features explicit intention to apply the agreement throughout the company group and its supply networks and more robust clauses including for joint monitoring and compliance enforcement.
The vast majority of GFAs include the ILO’s four fundamental principles and rights at work (anti-discrimination, freedom of association, prohibition of child labour, prohibition of forced labour [ILO, 2018a]). Those core principles are further endorsed in other global instruments such as the UN Global Compact. They include common CSR issues such as protection of the environment and local communities and anti-corruption. In other respects, the content of GFAs varies by company typically in reference to company heritage, industry sector, trade unions involved and institutional contexts of the originating (parent) country of the MNC (Mustchin and Martínez Lucio, 2017; Sobczak, 2012). Scholars note the complex challenges in GFA implementation in diverse subsidiary and supplier institutional contexts (national, cultural, local bundles of rules). Facilitative factors of activating the agreement include key actor qualities of communication competencies and moral capital (Lévesque et al., 2018), skilled navigation of institutional frictions and strategic interests (Bourguignon et al., 2020; Helfen et al., 2015), establishing sector and global networks, and education and training of managers (Williams et al., 2015). Activated GFAs have been shown to gain management engagement to uphold fundamental labour rights, freedom of association and collective bargaining and promote their dispersion throughout a company group and partners and influence suppliers and contractors (ILO, 2019; Papadakis, 2011; Platzer and Rüb, 2014). The GFA is reported to enhance corporate capacities to supervise their subsidiaries and pressure suppliers in regard to CSR policy implementation and auditing (Bourguignon et al., 2020). Alongside these reported benefits, salient problems of implementation are reported. These significantly include local management non-engagement, lack of information and weak coordination between GUF and local union actors (Sobczak, 2012; Sydow et al., 2014).
Transnational social dialogue, including GFAs, is historically recent and experimental. Various approaches to its questions are useful. Our particular approach focuses on Germany-headquartered MNCs that are key sector actors in producer-driven global value chains. Germany-headquartered MNCs have an institutional heritage in negotiated, coordinated and co-determined socio-economic relations. They, with their trade union social partners, have learned to establish EU transnational social dialogue and governance bodies such as EWCs. Germany-headquartered MNCs are the majority of signatory companies of GFAs and they have accelerated expansion in Asia-Pacific countries in recent decades. The Asia-Pacific region exhibits vast historical and institutional diversity across the region. At the same time, it exhibits highly convergent political interests in accelerating economic and social development and global market opportunities. Established global MNCs’ increasing investment in the region exposes Asia-Pacific workers to a transnational arena and opens scope for socio-cultural institutional innovation and development of transnational employment relations. Our empirical study takes a sociological interpretive lens to explore questions regarding the regulatory effectiveness of German-headquartered MNCs’ transnational social dialogue particularly in regard to global framework agreements in their Asia-Pacific subsidiaries and suppliers.
Field study
We conducted an empirical study, in 2020–2023, of Germany-headquartered MNCs operating globally and focused particularly on their Asia-Pacific activities. Our open-ended enquiry (i.e. without hypotheses) sought knowledge and insights into the goings-on of transnational employment relations and social dialogue. This included focus on developments in agreements such as the GFA and how on-the-ground actors deal with them: factors of facilitation, hindrance, and effectiveness at the level of subsidiaries and supplier firm interface in regard to labour practices and social dialogue. The summative question posed is: how is regulatory effectiveness, intended in the GFA, brought about, sustained and advanced? We approached large MNCs experienced in transnational agreements and with established lead roles in producer-driven supply chain governance (Gereffi, 2018). Our discussion below utilizes data pertaining to six companies that operate in sectors producing industrial technology and equipment, pharmaceuticals and health equipment, energy, mobility and transportation (summarized in Table 1). The companies wholly or majority own scores of production subsidiaries and engage an unknown number of supplier entities in Asia-Pacific regions. They exhibit (and actors report) both various organizational adaptations and retention of traditional HQ control features, manager interchange, bilateral transfer of skilled employees, HR systems (e.g. job descriptions, performance appraisal, wage structures, internal labour markets) as well as subsidiary company discretion. All of the companies interact with the same global union. They are long-experienced in producer-driven supply chains. Individual global companies undoubtedly exhibit particularities but, importantly, the population of companies under study exhibits shared macro-characteristics, as above, and general patterns in regard to factors of actor receptivity and utility of transnational agreements. Our analytic approach focuses an interpretive sociological lens on the qualitative data collected. This fine-tuned approach yields insight into actors’ cooperative relations, creative engagement and crafted outcomes. It exposes factors of regulatory effectiveness.
Company briefs.
We, the authors, conducted 69 research interviews (of 25–180 minutes’ duration) with labour actors (36) including transnational and local (e.g. HQ, global union; national union), company (24) actors (e.g. executive at HQ or subsidiary, procurement, HR, supplier officer, board member) and NGO and expert actors (9). One of the authors was permitted to participate as a researcher-observer in a two-day Global Forum of an MNC we name KCorp. We utilize (with permission) appropriate communications from that source of data. Our data include material from actors with primary experience (i.e. has worked and domiciled transnationally for the company or negotiated, advised or formally interacted with it transnationally and
Respondents cited in text.
Our open-ended, reflection-seeking interviews sought actors’ responses to questions about factors of effectiveness of transnational social dialogue, particularly GFAs; the role of transnational labour and company actors at multiple levels; interactions across company entities and suppliers; and outcomes, issues, evolution. The interviews, when permitted, were recorded and transcribed. In all cases, notes were taken of the interviews and interviewer’s reflections. Our abductive approach to the research design and analysis enabled theoretical dialogue with empirical reflection (Denzin and Lincoln, 2011) in the course of data gathering to probe nuance and stimulate insight. We studied transcripts and notes closely and identified recurrent themes. Among salient themes were practical issues of implementation: communication, training, meetings and protocols, and practical confusion of formal agreements and forms of transnational social dialogue. These remain significant challenges (and are discussed elsewhere). However, in addition to practical effectiveness we identified a subtle and vital element of respondents’ reflections and insights. Respondents brought to light features of management–labour interaction with significant transnational reach, which we identify as ‘moral-political’ effectiveness. Moral-political effectiveness of regulatory intent (i.e. rule-making and compliance) – explained through data-rich depiction and interpretation below – constitutes a distinct and vital qualitative feature of multilevel transnational labour governance. It is built through several close and crucial steps. These entail legitimacy recognition and dispersion (or spreading around), the generation of authority capacity, and distribution (or sharing) of that authority. That distributed authority gained by conjoint activation among actors constitutes a moral-political power (or capacity) to get things done. Its effectiveness is perpetually prior to and constituent of material effectiveness. Here we tease out that moral-political effectiveness through fine-grained attention to its elements.
Moral-political effectiveness
Labour and company actors engaged in transnational social dialogue and undertaking GFAs fully recognize the asymmetries of their political-economy power and the inevitability of conflict. Actors associated with HQ activity established in the German regulatory context assume that conflict is, more or less, negotiated and managed among recognized parties. HQ actors also assume that understanding pertains, more or less, to a company’s transnational arena. The establishment of EU transnational labour institutions has widened scope to engage and negotiate. It has stimulated further scope and confidence to develop beyond-EU transnational social dialogue. That context lends significant prior legitimacy to the GFA inception and its potential for substantial multi-party interaction, which GUF actors claim and absorb. The GFA’s bilateral negotiation by corporate and transnational union actors attains an immediate legitimacy, and potential authority, in its formality and moral bindingness among the parties (even and especially as transnational legal binding is not available). But it is the achievement of further legitimacy recognition and authority building, and subsequent crafting of a distributed authority beyond the signatory representative actors and the influence of the German institutional context that is significant to the agreement’s moral-political and material effectiveness at diverse transnational levels, illustrated momentarily below. Transnational recognition of legitimacy and authority generation begin with dispersion among transnational parties of awareness of new legitimacies, and their possibilities.
Legitimacy dispersion
Labour actors, accorded legitimacy and respect in the German (and other EU member-states) context, assert an authority to act in a company’s transnational contexts in which the political legitimacy of trade union actors is often fragile and moral legitimacy unrecognized or ignored. Parties to the GFA signal sufficient mutual respect and expectation of the other party’s good faith negotiation and non-violation of the agreement. Given the clauses pertaining to monitoring and compliance, the parties signal willingness to share knowledge and expertise conducive to problem-solving. Actors associated with MNCs operating in Asia-Pacific contexts are aware that these cooperative features are often fraught and that management hostility toward unions is evident. At the same time, many companies value the favourable reputation of being a responsible global employer. In recognition of that value, and of the primary legitimacy embedded in the formal, morally binding agreement among knowingly political-economically asymmetrical parties, GUF officers assert that it is now ‘essential’ for a company interested in signing an agreement with a global union that it commits to integration of that cooperative orientation. A GUF actor, experienced in negotiations, explains: the company ‘must consider this [agreement] as a kind of DNA. It must be part of its management mentality; its management system. . . it must not just remain at the level of headquarters.’ Subsidiary companies must understand that ‘it is not something, somewhere, “over there” [at HQ]’ (Actor #10). That is, its moral and political legitimacy must be recognized by subsidiary actors. From that recognition, authority may be generated. (An on-paper signed agreement can hold a normative legitimacy but be inconsequential without cultivated and activated authority.)
To illustrate, a senior ICorp HQ manager reports that the company takes the ‘German system of social partnership seriously. . . we export that as a company. . . As a global company we approach our regional companies and make them aware of their commitments. . .’ (Actor #21). That positive intention nonetheless encounters diverse challenges on the ground. HQ messages are variously registered. A GUF actor with Southeast Asia responsibilities reports that companies agree to GFAs in good faith, but ‘as soon as they [companies] leave Europe, there is a kind of blind spot’ (Actor #12). That ‘blind spot’ on encountering considerable institutional and political divergence and interpretative tensions requires sustained and multi-party address. Recognition of the existence of a ‘blind spot’ is a first step. MNC corporate-level interaction with Asia-Pacific subsidiary company actors is a crucial node of power and fragility. German (or EU-sourced) HQ legitimacy, while remaining formally assumed, weakens in recognition over geographic and institutional distance as other legitimacies are asserted and respected, and distant ones ignored. A GUF officer illustrates: ‘Even though there is goodwill and the companies want to make a GFA work’ there are frequently wide differences in understanding: ‘The first reaction of the local management is, what is this? What does this “global agreement” mean? Why should we do it?’ (Actor #10).
GUF actors are key actors in illuminating and surpassing that blind spot. They utilize their cross-cultural expertise to communicate to local subsidiary and union actors fundamental ‘meanings’ of the agreement. A GUF actor depicts the GFA, in the first instance, as a ‘promise’. It sends ‘a very strong signal. . . people understand a promise’ in addressing conflicts (Actor #13). A promise is a moral communication. Labour and cooperative company actors activate that moral legitimacy recognition in local contexts. They spell out a primary meaning: ‘we have the readiness of the employer to talk with the global union’ (Actor #13). For local actors, the GFA becomes recognized as something that formally links corporate HQ with local issues with concrete potential. It is not a remote, foreign affair. Labour actors in spelling out the moral communication of the GFA disperse its legitimacy and enable its potential to be recognized. Asia-Pacific subsidiary actors shift in recognition of GUF authority and learn new expectations of engagement. Local managers’ primary new learning is often that ‘there is a deficit. They [local managers] are going to have to change, to deal with that’ (Actor #6).
However, local management changes and adjustments are frequently contested or resisted. There occur, for instance, evident assertions by subsidiary company managers to refuse recognition and application of the GFA, as two ICorp regional managers in India respectively illustrate: ‘we stick to Indian law and labour compliances’ (Actor #20); ‘We discourage any kind of intervention coming from the [HQ] union trying to direct us’ (Actor #19). Labour actors associated with OCorp in India report similar neglect: ‘OCorp doesn’t want the GFA in India. They want to disconnect from HQ. They only abide by Indian laws’ (Actor #1). An OCorp worker reported that at his site management has refused to engage: ‘they [managers] tell us the GFA is only for Europe’ (Actor #4). We note that OCorp also depicts forms of engagement as indicated below.
In awareness of local management refusals, HQ unions and works council actors persevere in building recognition and dispersion of legitimacy through communicating directly and informally with local unions, which are affiliated with the GUF, to inform and support local actors. Their transnational relations increase local labour actors’ knowledge of the GFA and its relevance for them. Those actions, which signal and stimulate legitimacy recognition among dispersed actors, can ripple into networks of transnational company actors along with regional and local union actors. Local recipients, whose contextual and historical institutional expectations are commonly inclined to mutual suspicion and default labour subservience in industrial relations, encounter new learnings and possibilities. Legitimacy recognition fosters a quality and confidence that stimulates authority capacity and demand formation in the realization of company agreements.
For example: Actor #2, a trade union leader in an ICorp factory in northwest India, exemplifies this quality. He reported that he ‘took copies of the [company’s] GFA’ to his union meetings and encouraged his fellow workers to study it. Even as Indian law recognizes core ILO conventions, these are often loosely respected. The GFA restates those rights and includes additional elements and their intended global reach. ‘I told them [the factory workers] that for you as [ICorp worker], the parent [HQ] union in Germany and [the global union] have signed this GFA. I told them that you keep it [the GFA] with you. . . It has given confidence to the people.’ As Actor #2 illustrates, local labour actors in conjunction with regional GUF actors learn of their potential empowerment. They utilize the GFA’s corporate legitimacy to demand local management recognition and response to local labour concerns.
A further illustration of local confidence and political demand formation stimulated by dispersion of legitimacy recognition occurs in an OCorp subsidiary in western India. Actor #4, an assembly worker and union leader, reported that local workers were enabled to establish their union because of the GFA. That ‘first time achievement’ has enabled his local union to gain ‘training and information about labour rights’ (Actor #4) from transnational labour actors including HQ and GUF actors. Through persistent invocation of the agreement and claiming its authority for themselves, his small union has achieved a monthly meeting with HR managers. ‘This is very big. We are talking; they are talking with us’ (Actor #4). The ‘idea’ of regularizing employment and decent work for the irregular majority of OCorp’s workforce is on the table. A GUF actor summarizes: ‘When the union starts telling management you can’t do X because it’s against the company policy at the global level, then that gets respect’ (Actor #12). Nonetheless, movement from respect to sustained compliance, or regulatory effectiveness, requires authoritative collaboration among multiple parties. Its generation is actively crafted.
Authority generation
Legitimacy recognition and dispersion across transnational and multilevel parties, union actors, subsidiary managers and local workers and communities is a core step in building the authority potentiality of the agreement into effectiveness. More substantive building and demonstrating a moral-political authority occurs, for instance, in highly visible symbolic and practical conjoint events among the parties. Conjoint missions, required by the GFA, entail annual visits to selected global operations sites by a delegation of global union representatives, German unions and EWC officers, and HQ and regional or country-level company personnel. HQ actors include company officers in senior positions, such as HR, CSR and procurement officers and board members. They participate in formal monitoring meetings and informal meetings, and multi-party mixing (including dinners) with local actors. Conducting joint corporate and GUF missions to Asia-Pacific sites is perceived by local labour actors to, in the first instance, consolidate legitimacy recognition among local parties, and subsequently demonstrate and distribute the authority of the agreement. Local actors report their consequent empowerment to take local actions and raise demand with local MNC company sites and suppliers. Some company actors also report that authoritative effectiveness: a senior manager in ICorp China reported on the group complexity in China, with scores of legally distinct entities and site unions across the country. Before the GFA and the HQ conjoint visits it required, ‘we didn’t talk, didn’t meet. . .’. Recognition of the GFA initiated unprecedented collaborations, for instance: ‘we have organized a committee of all the [subsidiaries] with managers and unions. We share knowledge and concerns. After the GFA we have to sit [to talk] together. The global supervisory board comes to China. . . there’s a global team visiting us every two years. It’s been critical for local managers; it has a really big impact on us’ (Actor #23). The committee she refers to is understood by HQ actors as akin to a works council.
In the Indian context with its high proportion of temporary contract workers and weak linkages for supplier inclusion in a GFA application, the GFA’s authority is built, as in China illustrated above and in other Asia-Pacific countries, through high-profile HQ actor visits that require local management interaction and encourage learning of expectations and responsibilities. GUF actors recognize that compliance (for all parties) is learned and skilful. They have demanded of corporate HQs (successfully in the case of ICorp and ACorp) to contribute to the training of local managers through their site visits. A regional GUF actor reports that managers say ‘okay, so we are supposed to protect freedom of association’. There is recognition that, having signed a GFA, ‘active union busting can actually harm the company’ (Actor #3). Ceasing union busting, it must be noted, is a significant accomplishment. Union busting and other significant violations usually occur among supplier firms (who may be physically present on multi-employer MNC subsidiary sites). Local company actors learn that it is their responsibility to avoid or prevent these, even if national law is silent on the matter. Taking that responsibility enables and builds authority to pursue steps toward supplier compliance with the GFA and gain its material and social effectiveness for all workers linked to the MNC. A manager at ECorp in South Korea notes succinctly: ‘they [HQ] wouldn’t come if they weren’t taking this seriously. . . We get the message’ (Actor #15). That ECorp officer is also prominent in a national industry forum in South Korea where German companies interact with national business actors. That forum also contributes to moral-political norm building, dissemination and innovation. It contributes cultural and behavioural qualities that assist compliance capacities and achievement.
A further illustration of the effectiveness of networked relations, built through the GFA’s authority, occurs in regard to an incident at FCorp in Indonesia. A GUF officer resident in Indonesia reported a violent attack: ‘Strangers came to the factory. They burned buildings. . . The union was blamed; the company sued the union. . . .’ The GUF and ‘European networks and German union helped us. . .’ (Actor #24). That GUF officer reported that through multilevel corporate and union actors’ intervention it was eventually proved that local managers, and not the union as pejoratively slandered, had instigated the fire and prosecutions resulted.
Local actors report how occasions of GUF officers’ visits, which are enabled by HQ corporate level, enhance interaction on the GFA’s implementation. A regional GUF actor in India reports in reference to ACorp, which has multiple subsidiary sites in India, that: ‘The very fact that [the GUF] was able to just pick up the phone and ask the [local ACorp] management [to permit GUF personnel] to visit. . . The company manager said, “yes, you can come”. . . Before the GFA I could not imagine the factory saying that to any union’ (Actor #3).
Actors, especially those at corporate level or transnationally associated with the corporate level (as in subsidiary managers reporting to HQ, or GUF actors with a phone line to HQ actors) also recognize and sustain a micro-social power inclusive of mutual respect and attitude of trust between individual parties. Inter-actor trust and mutual recognition can have a contagious effect. National union leaders in Indonesia reported an illustration of a consequence of building trust and improved relations in negotiating conflict and demand. A controversial new statutory law with national application portended a negative effect for workers. Indonesian union actors reported that several of the companies in our study had ‘signed an agreement with us [national union] that they won’t apply the [detrimental] new law’ (Actor #11). They attribute this agreement to their generating improved relations and fostering conjoint responsibility (We note the prior multilateral orchestration among multiple parties generative of that remarkable agreement.)
Authority, understood sociologically following Durkheim (1974), is a moral power resource that GFA-enabled actors simultaneously claim and generate in its activation. The
Crafting distributed authority
As the above illustrations show, companies exhibit a dynamic mix of commitment, neglect or incapacity in regard to their global agreements. HQ handshakes require transnational concertation of effort and commitment to transfer and integrate a global legitimacy and build authority and effectiveness of global agreements. The asymmetrical political-economy power between parties, it must be noted, is readily evident, but the authority accruing to the GFA institution and the union actors who proceed to build and use it generates further capacity to act authoritatively in distributing the responsibilities of transnational dialogue and labour protection.
Crafting transnational authority with local effect entails three key elements: firstly, engagement in the form of sharing knowledge and expertise conducive to addressing problems. This occurs through transnational labour actors, including those based in the HQ country, in GUFs, and in global labour networks participating in advisory interactions and exchanging valuable knowledge. These occur in addition to the conjoint visits, noted above, and depict a spillover effect. Actors reported that knowledge exchange includes union-sourced intelligence about conflictual issues at global sites with company actors affecting production or of agreement compliance failure. An example of knowledge and expertise sharing is reported by a German HQ union transnational actor (Actor #5), in reference to an incident in a Malaysian subsidiary of OCorp. A senior manager at a Malaysian site contacted Actor #5 for help: ‘The local union were escalating a conflict situation and they started to fight [including violence]. . . The [local] manager phoned me [in crisis] and said he’d talked with HQ management and the works council. They didn’t know what to do. . . .’ Actor #5, who had established a prior cooperative relationship with the Malaysia subsidiary manager, contributed advice and practical intervention in the situation. Ultimately, the shared authoritative intervention of the transnational parties in cooperation with local unions and managers resolved the conflict. (It must be noted that Actor #5’s German union was a signatory party along with the GUF to the GFA pertaining to the OCorp site in Malaysia, and therefore a legitimate multilevel actor.)
Labour and company actors reported numerous instances of managers at HQ and Asian subsidiary levels directly flying-in German union and EWC actors to help local actors to learn conflict negotiation and cooperative relations. A senior manager (Actor #18) of a South Korean subsidiary of ECorp illustrated that pragmatic engagement and its role in emergent authority sharing. His example arises from an effect of a more expected response to rational-legal and hierarchical authority in bureaucratic organization. Actor #18 commented on ECorp’s HQ relations with its South Korean subsidiary in regard to various operational matters: ‘I’m competing in an environment where I’m forced by my head office to implement certain standards. This [agreement] is part of my job description to implement. It’s very much top down to us sitting in Korea. It is to apply [it] in all our business units. . .’ (Actor #18). The respondent reported that company actors, tasked by HQ, were using regional networks, inclusive of global union, HQ transnational and local union actors, in working out how to implement agreed standards and engage their suppliers in their application. Company actors were pragmatically utilizing the authoritative knowledge of the unions, as social partners, in sharing authority to realize transnational agreements. Similarly, an ECorp senior manager in South Korea reported the transfer of German engineers for one-year assignments to Korea and Malaysia. That ‘really helps local workers to learn. . .’. In addition to technical skills ‘they learn about sustainability and social dialogue’ (Actor #17) that is more commonly promoted at HQ level than subsidiary level. That sharing of new knowledge and expertise in building competence among local managers as well as union actors contributes to the generation of cooperative, shared authority in addressing problems over some operational and social issues.
Further illustration is depicted in the incidence of company responses to CSR goals on sustainability. Company actors report that many companies have recently established a ‘sustainability dialogue’ prominently including transnational management personnel tasked with sustainability and ethical compliance reporting. For example, Actor #26, with responsibilities for sustainability and procurement, reports: ‘We’re using instruments like the GRIs [Global Reporting Initiatives] to identify risk areas. And we’ve got the local unions involved.’ Sustainability officers engage with GUF actors in provision and exchange of valuable knowledge. A GUF actor reports in reference to the automotive and electronics sectors examples in which companies have invited his inclusion in their regional sustainability meetings: ‘They’ve made a very big change. . . Now I’m regularly invited to attend. They’re really interested in our input. . .
A second feature of crafting distributed authority occurs in institutionalizing global forums. Development of transnational social dialogue entails both effective collective bargaining institutions and establishment of transnational and global forums (works councils) that are evidently more than just one-way presentation of company information. These plural channels demonstrate recognition of the legitimacy of conflict negotiation inclusive of wage demands and grievance expression and the legitimate authority of joint global company forums. Recent and renewed GFAs include provision for establishment of world works councils or forums. For these to be effective in contexts with little or no democratic infrastructure, the legitimacies attained in the agreement must be crafted into authority and its subsequent sharing. The forums, assisted in their formation by EWCs, demonstrate, as a GUF actor states, that there ‘are certain matters that are shared, in which we have joint interest’ (Actor #13). Mutual interest recognition encourages shared responsibility in actions. The EWCs, which deliberately utilize the learned capacities of decades of European institutions are, a GUF actor reports, ‘the main promoters. . . pro-active in transnational social dialogue development. They make sure [agreements] are translated, put on websites, and the text is shared’ (Actor #6). Their efforts of global solidarity also include facilitating local union actor knowledge building and regional network building. A senior manager at KCorp, Asia-Pacific, attested to that: ‘The EWC is an important instrument in transferring institutional resources and know-how to the global forum. . . Global dialogue forums are important for the future’ (Actor #8). We note that these reports extend observations, notably those of Haipeter et al. (2019), of the articulation of labour institutions and their governance effects.
A company’s agreement to establish a global works forum is regarded by multi-party actors as expressing a significant commitment to ongoing transnational social dialogue. For GUF actors, it shows that transnational labour issues are ‘part of the whole management structure’. These developments indicate progress in institutional expression of dialogical participation throughout a company’s global operations. A regional GUF actor interprets those actions to indicate ‘they respect. . . the workforce globally. . . Imagine you come from a developing country, and you are part of a World Works Council and the CEO is over there talking to you. It’s incredible’ (Actor #7). Global works forums formally provide mutual access and connectivity of HQ and subsidiaries to each other, and to EWCs and the potentialities of conjoint engagement in decision forums. Concrete realizations of the potential of that mutual access for knowledge exchange and demand raising are emerging. A senior manager at KCorp reported that the global forum brought a global focus on persistent health and safety problems, including serious industrial injury and fatality, in their company’s operations. The global forum promotes shared agreement that ‘safety needs to be everywhere. . . we need to change our culture, so that in everything we do safety has to be priority’ (Actor #19). Global differences in workers’ exposure to safety risk are well known. The global forum promotes shared responsibility for addressing that severe problem and joint authority among regional and local actors in demanding local site compliance with global company rules. Other respondents, including a national union executive, associated with KCorp, reported that the global forum helps to ‘bring subsidiary companies into line but there’s issues with suppliers. . . that’s a core problem’ (Actor #14).
As well as the supply firms’ issue, the absence of China from global forums and exchanges is acutely noted. (China actors do not participate due to non-recognition of direct GUF–China unions relations, a complex tension beyond the scope of this article to address.) Nonetheless, the global forum stimulates network building that includes information from Chinese sites entering the global knowledge exchange and response demands. These undertakings, which actors report to global forums, include building on-line connections with supplier firms and contract workers. A transnational union actor, experienced in union-to-union engagement in China, reported a company’s global forum’s utility in highlighting corporate attention to the complexities of issues of temporary workers. Disputes over the non-compliant use of temporary workers who are entitled by the GFA ‘to get the same money, the same working conditions as normal full time XCorp employees’ in their national contexts, including China, regularly occur. ‘It’s very tough for the company [HQ and works council] to enforce that’ (Actor #22), due to the complexity of local managements dealing with traditional use of temporary workers. The global forum’s exposure of the issue signals multilevel pressure on XCorp’s China operations for compliance improvement. Corporate management and labour representatives share company authority in seeking local compliance with the agreement but non-compliance persists. In this example, there is recognition of authority sharing by transnational social partners in efforts to address temporary worker discrepancies, but local managers lack authority vis-a-vis local state actors to enforce the transnational agreement. That non-enforcement presents immense challenges to corporate and labour actors. Global forums are currently exploratory initiatives toward greater collaboration in developing transnational social dialogue.
A third feature in crafting distributed authority for the conduct of GFAs entails sustained provision for shared compliance and monitoring and input into sustainability reporting. GFA instigation of a joint global monitoring committee includes joint missions, as noted above. In addition to the highly effective communication of HQ engagement and multi-party social cooperation, these intensive events entail detailed monitoring of compliance with the GFA, and identification of problems and blockages. Their multi-party composition and multiple language translations attract wider industry attention. They indicate that the parties: ‘share responsibility for monitoring the GFA. Everyone is involved’ (Actor #10). When the joint mission finds things that are not in conformity or fail to comply with the agreement it formally advises local company actors that: ‘you need to come together with the local union people. You must provide a plan for improving those issues’ (Actor #10). The joint mission requires reports of the compliance improvements. In addition, the MNC’s global forum receives local representative reports on local compliance and supplier firm issues. More generally, the GUF actors address complaints and violations that local unions are not able to address. GUF actors intervene with the national or plant managers where violation has occurred. A local union leader, Actor #2, and a local labour-NGO in northern India site, Actor #1, reported a boost in local awareness among workers of violations normally tolerated following joint missions to ICorp and OCorp sites. Actor #1, for instance, remarked that people ‘took more notice of migrant workers, and day labourers (without contracts)’ on his local OCorp site. That understated observation found greater endorsement in Actor #2’s assertion that corporate and multilevel attention had a ‘huge’ effect. Shared ‘taking notice’, we emphasize, is crucial to the long road toward accomplishing compliance.
The GFA’s provision of international monitoring and compliance evidence enables local labour actors to have a route of communication, through GUF and HQ union actors, to HQ senior managers. The agreement intends that local conflicts and breaches be first addressed at the local level. When that fails to occur and GUF actors bring an important issue to the attention of HQ managers, the latter report that they then ‘get involved’. An ICorp senior manager (Actor #21) recounted an example of a transnational dispute in India: ‘We [HQ] put a lot of attention into that. . . I got involved.’ The regional subsidiary managers were required to explain the situation. ‘Most of time, just by us looking at the issue, local people will find a solution. Nobody [local managers] wants to be seen in the eyes of headquarters as having a conflict. . . Local actors “find a local solution” and inform the supervisory board’ (Actor #21).
The GFA-enabled authority for direct communications of transnational labour issues to HQ is further respected by HQ actions in hierarchical authority expressed as ‘looking at the issue’ that signals further authoritative action. A multilevel and shared authority toward a labour issue resolution is enacted. Shared responsibility and authority find further concrete expression when company actors with CSR responsibilities routinely integrate social and environmental monitoring in their supply chain interactions. An OCorp manager with responsibilities for a significant operation in the company’s subsidiary companies in China reported: ‘We have so many suppliers in China. . . We don’t always know what happens when some supplier gets other suppliers in. . . .’ His team, he states, ‘are really serious about the audits. We [OCorp] do them ourselves, everywhere’ (Actor#16). They interact with GUF officers to gain information for supplier audits. A GUF officer with South Asia responsibilities corroborates that: some companies, without direct GUF pressure, ‘will follow up [violations] themselves; they will contact the supplier, they will go for an audit. . .’ (Actor #6). That cooperative action of shared responsibility illustrates a moral-political effectiveness of the prior crafting of moral-political authority.
Discussion
In the institutional context of the Germany-headquartered MNCs in our study, recognition of unions’ essential role in protecting social interests in the course of strategic business action is, more or less, accepted. In contexts beyond the EU, the management of social interests can, to understate, be opaque and highly variable. Asia-Pacific subsidiary managers acknowledge the formal authority of HQ control and evidently comply with extensive HQ requirements and standard adoptions in various technical and operational matters. At the same time, local managers adjudicate their industrial relations decisions according to their interpretation of the rules of their more proximate socio-cultural contexts. The political arena of corporate and local interaction regarding labour rights and standards is contested. MNC HQ actors express (to the researchers) their insistence on Asia-Pacific companies’ compliance with global company agreements but concede local management actors’ variable concern for enforcement of labour standards and rights.
MNCs’ mix of variable local authority along with considerable global power incurs salient pressure points for concerted engagement of global and local labour actors. A company’s undertaking of a global agreement deliberately raises the interests of transnational workers to corporate global responsibility. Local management pressure points intensify. Our study shows that acceptance of global responsibility requires and enables multilevel and multilateral actors to forge its socio-economic effectiveness. Crucial to that effectiveness, we contend, is the crafting of moral-political effectiveness inclusive of distributed authority among diverse competent actors. As noted, the GFA between corporate-level actors and a GUF, which itself is a multi-party entity, and often an HQ union or EWC is a multi-party agreement. The authority of that multi-party agreement, attained on good-faith signature (and under only the faint shadow of the German state), is accompanied by broad recognition of the enormity of the tasks of practical application of the GFA and progressive transnational social dialogue in global markets. Lead actors are aware that the authority of that multi-party agreement carries a compliance and sanction capacity that is virtually entirely moral-political. For that private governance regulatory force to take effect, multiple actors must recognize its legitimate and distributed authority and be responsive to it.
Local management refusal or neglect of the agreement’s requirements in deference to more proximate traditional authority is a significant sticking point. Our data indicate that exposure to multilevel and multi-actor networked information exchange and communication expressive of the moral-political character and co-responsibility of the GFA fosters motivational shift. Authority recognition among subsidiary managers is initiated by joint dispersion efforts, from HQ or GUF in-person visits to email networks and social media forums, communicating the GFA’s corporate legitimacy, that encourage actor learning. Authority recognition implicitly instructs actors how to behave in the absence of coercive enforcement by material sanction or by statutory law, and at socio-cultural distance from corporate headquarters. Local managers, when encouraged or pressured by corporate and GUF actors, learn that the global agreement is not just a corporate-level concern and that it fully pertains to them. They learn to re-adjudicate and shift local norms to accommodate and, more or less, aim to meet GFA-mandated labour rights and standards. Activation of the compliance and complaints instruments of the GFA, and the response of its corporate-level joint committee, communicates a considerable shared authority among parties. Their distinct political-economy asymmetries encounter unprecedented pressures. Those pressures, while unlikely to yield unprecedented collaboration, accomplish shared interest recognition and responsibilities for global labour governance. That, in turn, opens the horizon for future demand of asymmetry negotiation.
A key feature of the GFA infrastructure inclusive of international committees and global works councils is the enablement of an unprecedented closer proximity of dispersed transnational labour actors and company senior officers. The shortening of vertical distance and widening of workers’ horizontal forums and subsequent transnational exchange strengthen participatory potential. Respondents’ illustrations highlight company actor recognition that transnational labour actors convey both moral-political authority and the authority of rational competences (i.e. as demonstrated in skilful accomplishment of valued tasks or demonstrated technical knowledge) in their conduct of conflict negotiation and dissemination of transnational social dialogue. Similarly, transnational labour actors in their multilevel cooperative engagement with HQ and local managements at multiple sites and networks at national, regional and transnational levels demonstrate to Asia-Pacific site workers the potential of negotiated cooperative management relations, as other studies have shown (ILO, 2018b; Lévesque et al., 2018). The challenges of cooperative engagement among company and labour actors, who are demonstrably political-economically unequal parties, to Asia-Pacific parties cannot be underestimated. Its rudiments are premised on competencies of knowledge exchange, mutual respect and shared interest recognition in the company’s business success and good management. These rudiments, as Haipeter and colleagues (2019) demonstrate, must be generated among actors.
The occurrence of the highly authoritative GFA sets transnational socio-economic parties on a path of engagement of morally originated (Casey et al., 2021) and pragmatic collaboration. That moral-pragmatic endeavour, we propose, occurs when actors in activating and carrying out the social responsibilities (moral principles and duties) entailed in the GFA, and various global CSR initiatives, creatively participate (i.e. pragmatism) in the tasks of carrying out the demands and possibilities of the GFA. They do so within the complexity of multiple levels and through multilateral communications and innumerable sites. Productively navigating that complexity (inclusive of cultural, linguistic, infrastructural factors) requires multilevel distribution of authority, as our data illustrate, among competent actors to undertake the practical interventions required to address and improve transnational labour issues with substantive local and global effect. Pragmatic recognition of both task enormity and sustained moral-political authority, encouraged by GUF actors, initiates interactions and processes that stimulate creative engagement and craft features of authority sharing among the parties. As illustrated in the data, that includes joint training events, participatory world forums, international joint committees and missions for monitoring and enforcement and, more subtly, in the form of inter-actor phone calls, cross-party micro-pragmatic cooperation and multi-party networking. Authority sharing occurs initially and more visibly between corporate actors and GUFs. But inclusion of local union and company actors, as illustrated above, and the observed communications of HQ labour networks and labour-NGOs, contribute to the shaping of a multilevel regulatory effect.
These are sophisticated cooperative undertakings that demonstrate embedding forces and socio-cultural constraints on corporate political-economic power. The bilateral GFAs agreed at corporate level and enacted in diverse local contexts shape a distinctive and significant infrastructure of cooperation with global application. They play a lead role, along with other agreements and forums, in forging paths to multilevel, multifaceted collaborative governance of global labour practices. To date, the forging of transnational social dialogue through the framework agreement procedures, as researchers have demonstrated (ILO, 2018a; Platzer and Rüb, 2014), has brought improvements to global workers’ everyday conditions and experiences of working life (including health and safety, wages, durable contracts and gender equity). Challenges to sustained improvements nevertheless remain immense.
Crafting multilevel governance, as others have shown, is undoubtedly a work of uncertainty, flexibility and practical experimentation (Allain-Dupré, 2020; Haipeter et al., 2019; Marginson and Keune, 2015). Framework agreements in their design allow for adaptability and localized shaping in view of various options and conditions. Multilevel actors embedded in the cooperative relations to which the parties have signed up have potential to design and innovate more cooperative and, at least, less exploitative global labour relations. Our data show some real-life realization of that potential. Building shared authority reduces and constrains company unilateral political economic power. The socio-economic parties concede mutual dependencies even as they retain their autonomies. In that way, multilevel, multi-actor distribution of moral-political authority and responsibility within the global MNC and its immediate parties – unions – exerts a multilevel governance effect on capitalist political economy power. Of course, substantive mass results of that multilevel transnational labour governance remain fraught and contested. Moreover, it is readily apparent that GFAs remain predominantly a European development and dependent on European heritage institutions. The cultivation of moral-political authority, while essential, is not sufficient for sustained regulatory effectiveness of transnational labour governance. It requires accompaniment by formal statutory law. Some development of that is currently in progress. The corporate level, for EU headquartered MNCs, currently faces new legal requirements to demonstrate due diligence of the company’s global actions including within its supplier firms (German Bundestag Act, 2021; European Commission, 2019). As challenging as that mandate will be to evidence, the existence of the GFA’s infrastructure and cultivated capacities for shared authority propose a vital collaborative resource.
Conclusion
We have argued in this article that the complex and dynamic challenges of transnational labour governance require, and stimulate the development of, multilevel, multi-party and multilateral response. The development of multilevel, multi-actor shared responsibilities depends on the generation of a shared moral-political authority inclusive of pragmatic elements in creatively addressing problems. In the case of our study’s investigation undertakings of that multilevel edifice are underway. These are in-progress undertakings in full cognizance of the implications for conventional configuration of political-economy power especially salient in Asia-Pacific contexts. They are replete with fragilities and tensions and no company, from our evidence, exhibits any pattern of consistent success. Asia-Pacific, and industry, contexts are diverse and global markets defiant of prediction. Companies, as expected, behave strategically. Transnational labour actors chafe at company tardiness and global inconsistencies while local workers express (to the researchers) the ‘huge’ enablements company transnational agreements have brought for them in terms of respect, demand expression, and local successful interventions of regulatory effect.
The institution of the global framework agreement plays a flagship part in a multifaceted agenda of transnational social dialogue. On signature, the company admits an unprecedented global social embedding. Its development along with the exertion of formal authority of rational-legal instruments indicates significant potential for regulating global corporate action. The crafting of multilevel transnational labour governance proposes to generate new qualities and capacities for more democratic global governance of other common concerns, including climate change response. Yet that optimistic cast cannot ignore the fact that the vast majority of global MNCs beyond the EU persistently avoid or obstruct engagement in any form of transnational social dialogue or the multilevel, multi-party governance we have favoured in this article. Nonetheless, the knowledge resources and cooperative competencies, as we have shown, exist and can be politically utilized.
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
Funding
ORCID iDs
