Bargaining For The Global Compact

Global union-employer agreements are "the best way forward" for the Global Compact advocated by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

That was the message from world union leader Fred Higgs when multinational CEOs, unions and non-governmental organisations met under Annan's chairmanship yesterday at UN headquarters in New York.

BOOSTING LABOUR RIGHTS:
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and ICEM General Secretary Fred Higgs.

First launched by Kofi Annan in Davos last year, the Global Compact aims to ensure respect for labour rights, other human rights and the environment within a globalised economy.

"Organised labour and organised business can best 'embrace and enact' the Global Compact by negotiating global agreements," Higgs told yesterday's meeting. He is General Secretary of the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM).

Most of the multinationals represented at the New York meeting are in ICEM-organised sectors. Higgs challenged them to reach verifiable global agreements with the ICEM as soon as possible.

"Collective bargaining is one of the rights enshrined in the Compact," he said, expressing strong support for Annan's initiative. "Collective bargaining could also be the means of securing compliance with all of the Nine Principles upon which the Compact is based."

Not coincidentally, Higgs pointed out, the focus of the ICEM's current agreements with multinationals is "precisely those labour standards, human rights and environmental responsibilities that are enshrined in the Compact's Nine Principles."

The ICEM already has such agreements with multinationals Statoil and Freudenberg, Higgs stated, and "we expect to reach similar agreements with a number of other global corporations in the near future."

Meanwhile, current negotiations with the International Council of Chemical Associations could soon produce "the first-ever global sectoral agreement," Higgs said. This would ensure ICEM involvement in the monitoring and implementation of the chemical companies' Responsible Care programme, thus helping to achieve "the highest standards of occupational health and safety and of environmental protection" at chemical plants worldwide.

Global corporate or sectoral agreements signed with the ICEM give it "the right to monitor compliance and to raise with the global corporate managements or the sectoral federations any breaches of the agreements," he emphasised. "This is the crucial difference between global agreements and companies' own internal codes of conduct."

Global agreements also benefit the companies, Higgs argued, as they "give substance and credibility to corporate ethics."

Go to: Global Compact Web-site