CSR and unions

Unions in Sweden

Workers’ movements in Sweden began as early as the 1850s, when some of the country’s first organized strikes took place. Soon after, unions were formed around specific trade groups, and a powerful national labor movement was born.(Sweden.se)

Unions in Sweden

The early trade unions played a decisive role in securing some of the rights that workers still enjoy today. Among these are universal voting rights, pension benefits and the prohibition of child labor. In these respects, and in many others, labor unions helped to lay the foundation of the modern Swedish welfare state. (Sweden.se)

Unions in Sweden

Today, around 70 percent of all Swedish workers belong to a trade union, making Sweden one of the most unionized countries in the world. (Sweden.se)

Unions in Sweden

Proposed legislative measures that affect not only the labor market, but Swedish society as a whole, are often passed by the trade union confederations, LO, TCO and Saco for review and input. This gives trade unions a level of political influence that is unmatched in many countries.(Sweden.se)

Unions in Sweden

In general, members rely on trade unions to uphold and improve their rights as workers. From considering a contract to losing a job and becoming unemployed, unions can strengthen your bargaining position throughout your career through their legal expertise and negotiation privileges. (Sweden.se)

Unions in Sweden

Union organizations may help workers achieve fair and reasonable wages, ensure equal treatment, provide added pension and unemployment insurance and generally promote other social issues. The same rights also apply to those who are not members of a union. The Swedish labor market is built on a long heritage of negotioations between businesses, trade unions and the government, so all parties generally agree about the basic conditions.  (Sweden.se)

Unions in Sweden

About 1.7 million of the blue-collar workers in Sweden, those who perform work needing strength or physical skill rather than office work, belong to the Swedish Trade Union Confederation (LO). It is an umbrella organization for 14 Swedish trade organizations in both the public and private sectors. (Sweden.se)

Unions in Sweden

There are also two large unions to which the majority of white-collar workers, office workers, in Sweden belong. The Swedish Confederation of Professional Employees (TCO) is the largest, with about 1.3 million members. It is also an umbrella organization, working at national and international levels on issues covering job satisfaction, development and opportunities, as well as other labor-related issues. (Sweden.se)

Unions in Sweden

The Swedish Confederation of Professional Associations (Saco) has approximately 600,000 union members who represent about two dozen independent groups, including economists, lawyers, architects, doctors, teachers and other professions that require a college or university degree. (Sweden.se)

Unions in Sweden

The rights of workers are to be found in what is collectively called labour law. This is based on statutes, ordinances and regulations of various kinds. Labour legislation has given workers the following: the right to participation in decision-making at the workplace, the right to holidays, shorter working hours, a better working environment, increased employment security.(lo.se)

Unions in Sweden

There is also the specific form of regulation called the collective agreement, which is concluded between the trade union and the employer. Many important rules of labour law are mandatory to the benefit of the worker – that is to say, collective agreements that deviate from the law must be more advantageous than the law for the individual worker. (lo.se)

Unions in Sweden

A collective agreement is a written, signed agreement between the employee organisation on the one hand and the employer organisation or employer on the other. Rules concerning collective agreements can be found in the Act on Co-determination at Work. (LO.se)

Unions in Sweden

The provisions of a collective agreement must be followed. A person who is in breach of a collective agreement is liable subsequently to rectify this. The employer may also be liable to pay a substantial amount in damages.

The collective agreement automatically binds both the members of the trade union and the companies that are members of the employers’ organisation concluding the agreement. (lo.se)

Unions in Sweden

Saco aims to Stimulate economic growth and raise the general level of

prosperity. Make it possible and profitable for everyone to invest in

an education. Improve educational quality and encourage greater

commitment to research. Introduce clear, simple rules for taxation and social

insurance. Strengthen the position of the individual in working life. Prevent discrimination at the workplace. (saco.se)

Unions in Sweden

The main thrust of Saco’s efforts is in policy areas such as the Labour market, Labour law, Integration, International cooperation, Equality between men and women, Wages and agreements, Economic policy, Taxes, Social insurance, Education and Research and development.(saco.se)

Unions in Sweden

TCO’s tasks The members of the TCO unions are professional employees in

working life. It is their common interests and conditions, as expressed by the affiliated unions, that form the basis of TCO’s operations. TCO is independent in party-political terms. TCO’s basic tasks are, together with the affiliated unions, to:

• Organise and recruit professional and qualified people in working life.

• Promote and defend the needs and interests of the members in the social debate and the political decision-making process.

• Safeguard trade union rights and freedoms. • Represent the affiliated unions in international trade union work.

(tco.se)

CSR and unions

In the Anglo-American compartmentalised business system there is little commitment to cooperation between firms or between employers and employees. (Preuss 2008:150)

CSR and unions

A collaborative business system, as found in most continental European countries, displays more cooperation between firms and sectors as well as a higher degree of employer-employee interdependence and trust in skilled workers. (Preuss 2008:150)

CSR and unions

The main feature of the Romanic-Germanic system is the state being an actor with a central role in industrial relations, leading to an extensive legal codification of industrial relations issues. (Preuss 2008:150)

CSR and unions

The Anglo-Irish system has a tradition of abstaining from regulating industrial relations through legislation with the state playing a limited role. (Preuss 2008:150)

CSR and unions

In the Nordic system, the state usually plays a background role too; however, industrial relations are shaped by a network of collective agreements between unions and employer associations that are seldom challenged by either side. (Preuss 2008:150)

CSR and unions

Unions are keen to point out that they nonetheless occupy a special status because they represent a category of stakeholders that can transfer their involvement from one company to another less easily than for example consumers. (Preuss 2008:155)

CSR and unions

There is considerable suspicion among trade unionists of the concept of CSR and that its terminology is only hesitantly adopted by unions. (Preuss 2008:157)

CSR and unions

At the same time, unions have utilised the concept of stakeholding to support some traditional union goals, such as preserving a special status of employees over other stakeholders, criticising the voluntary nature of CSR and demanding mandatory CSR reporting. There is thus at least embryonic evidence of unions beginning to test in what ways the concept could be used to support their long-standing concerns. (Preuss 2008:157)

CSR and unions

Codes serve various class interests. On the one hand, such codes offer the potential for improving work conditions and perhaps even the space for union organizing. On the other hand due to their ”northern” origins, codes may paper over repressive work conditions in the south. Monitoring devices can exclude worker involvement, interfere with bona fide union representation alltogether while shielding producers from purchaser ire. (Frundt 2004:37)

Labor´s Reservations Toward Codes of Conduct Corporations adopt codes primarily as a marketing tool,

not to ensure appropriate labor practices. Codes can be used to substitute for local laws. This is

unhealthy for local institutions, and the codes themselves have no legal force.

Monitoring is fundamentally designed to protect the corporate image. Outside monitoring risks interfering in bona fide union activities.

Workers must become knowledgeable about codes if they are to become ”one tool in a toolbox” for union action. (Frundt 2004:53)

CSR and unions

From the workers’ perspective, the problem is not a lack of codes or regulations; the problem is that the companies do not obey the laws that are already in force. (Frundt 2004:56)

CSR and unions

According to a labor leader: ”private companies certifying other firms is nothing more than a privatization of the labor code. The only way to do certification is to respect labor laws, and follow the mandated rules.(Frundt 2004:56)

CSR and unions

The most widespread codes in Central America are also the weakest and the ones monitored by for-profit auditors. These factories seldom have unions.

In plants certified by local NGOs the codes are often more demanding and here we see some union activity(Frundt 2004:63)

CSR and unions

Monitored codes could simply become bureaucratic shields, but they could also be weapon for rights. This latter will only happen if workers have a direct stake in the process. (Frundt 2004:64)

CSR and unions

In a survey of the world’s 500 largest corporations, 98 percent of those responding reported having a code of ethics or a similar guideline, with nearly two-thirds of them having adopted it in the 1990s. Similarly, numerous unions and NGOs in the North and the South have embraced codes of conduct as a potentially valuable mechanism for enforcing labor rights. (Rodriguez-Garavito 2005:204)

CSR and unions State incapacity, corporatist practices, state repression

and local capital’s anti-union strategies converge to create a blockage that has promted experimentation with codes of conduct and led labor rights advocates to pursue transnational strategies. Some unions and labor rights organizations have circumvented the national state and networked with sympathetic NGOs, consumers, students, regulators, and universities overseas that have used codes to pressure governments and TNCs, which in turn have occationally put pressure on Mexican and Guatemalan regulators to enforce labor rights. (Rodriguez-Garavito 2005:214)

CSR and unions

Given the lack of credibility of first-party monitoring (in which a single manufacturer monitors compliance based on audits carried out by its own personnel or by a commercial auditor hired by it) and second- party monitoring (which involves a business association formulating a code of conduct and hiring commercial firms to report on compliance, it is with third-party monitoring that the most censequential debates and experiments are taking place.(Rodriguez-Garavito 2005:214)

CSR and unions

The four sticking points in third-party monitoring are the content of the codes, the independence and comprehensiveness of monitoring, the transparency of the system, and sanctions for non compliance. (Rodriguez-Garavito 2005:215)

CSR and unions

Once TNCs, states, and other target actors have publicly committed to changing their position and complying with a set of rules or principles – in our cases, with regard to the protection of labor rights in global factories – coalitions can can use the tactic of accountability politics to hold those actors to their stated rules or principles. The potential of this type of politics as a source of counterbailing power lies in the fact that it can exploit the gap between discourse and practice to embarrass target actors for not keeping their word. (Rodriguez-Garavito 2005:223)

Empowered participatory labor regulation (EPLR) Power differentials between transnational

capital and local labor need to be reduced through institutional designs that effectively protect workers’ rights to organize and collectively bargain. (Rodriguez-Garavito 2005:211)

Empowered participatory labor regulation (EPLR) The inequality of voices between the Northern

and Southern parties – NGOs, unions, consumer groups etc – within monitoring systems needs to be adressed through equitable decision-making rules and forms of transnational engagement that overcome the current dominance of Northern actors and build the capacities of labor support organizations in the South. (Rodriguez-Garavito 2005:211)

Empowered participatory labor regulation (EPLR) EPLR supplements rather than replaces

state regulation. EPLR takes national labor laws and core international labor standards as the regulatory floor upon which codes must build and improve. (Rodriguez-Garavito 2005:)

CSR and unions

It remains to be studied how workers’ voices are in practice included or excluded in the processes of setting and implementing codes of conduct, and whether and how codes of conduct enable workers to organize and strengthen their voices in this and other debates. (Rodriguez-Garavito 2005:205)

CSR and unions

Assignment 1 – Unions and CSR. Try to find an example of the relation between

unions and CSR from your own country. How is the general opinion? Positive or negative standpoints? In what way do the unions act in relation to CSR programs and organizations? Is it a controversial issue? Write an analysis in your essay by using the articles for L7 (see course description under L7) and other material.

CSR and unions

A 5 page Word-document (single space, Times New Roman, font 12, normal margins) should be handed in electronically to martin.selander@handels.gu.se, at latest Thursday 23 September, 10:00 AM. Do NOT hand-in late and do NOT violate the format demands!

You are expected to be able to present and discuss the content of your report Monday 27 of September on Seminar 1.