Conference Agenda

(Track III. The role of institutions in ensuring decent work and universal social protection)

Collective bargaining has weakened as a regulatory mechanism between organised labour and employers. Nevertheless, collective bargaining remains a recognised institution for managing labour-management interests. Globally, high unemployment and economic insecurity are prominent outcomes and challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, in South Africa where new and growing workplace anti-migrant labour concerns intersect with historic socio-economic inequalities and global challenges, the role of collective bargaining in addressing these challenges in this context appears limited. Using this multiple-crisis context, I ask what is the role of collective bargaining in addressing emerging challenges. Thematic and content analysis of semi-structured interviews with unions and employers, newspaper articles and collective agreements are used to explore two main research questions: 1) what role have unions played in addressing emerging socio-economic challenges experienced by labour and employers and 2) what are the responses of collective bargaining in addressing the emerging crisis? Findings suggest that unions can be instrumental in the framing and advancement of non-economic interests of employees and enablers in the establishment of policies and agreements that aim to resolve emerging challenges of employment insecurity and inequality. In addition, the study demonstrates the extension of collective bargaining in addressing challenges emerging from the coalescence of workplace and societal issues both at Sector and plant levels. The study extends the literature on collective bargaining in a multi-crisis context; further provides practical implications for parties and the institution of collective bargaining in a multi-crisis. The study further contributes to the debate on the usefulness of collective bargaining and its relevance in emerging workplace challenges.

The Covid pandemic induced rapid changes in work organisation and generated a debate on how frontline service work should be valued and protected. This paper draws on research on the role of collective bargaining in supporting frontline workers in health, social care and food retail during the pandemic. Twelve case studies, four per sector, from ten countries (the UK, Portugal, Slovakia, Ireland, Norway, Hungary, Canada, New Zealand, Chile and Kenya) drew on interview data and documentary analysis to inform the ILO’s flagship report on collective bargaining.

The cases were chosen as potentially ‘best cases’ of actions to protect or revalue frontline workers. Even so positive outcomes were limited: in some cases collective bargaining did prevent the most negative impacts on frontline workers – eg by addressing unpaid wages in Kenya, absence of support for working parents in Hungary and pay cuts in Chile. Collective bargaining forums also provided a ready-made conduit for productive discussions on managing the pandemic, improving safeguards and support for workers. However, the effectiveness of social dialogue strongly depended upon the generosity of state policies towards sick pay, working parents, PPE provision, and occupational health and safety. Where state support remained limited, collective bargaining could at most provide only partial compensation. In some cases trade unions even had to resist state-imposed undemocratic and coercive powers over labour, including suspending collective bargaining, suspending rights to resign or to protest, extending overtime and working hours without consultation etc.

Some collective bargaining actions to revalue frontline labour were identified, but often the work towards these had begun pre-Covid. The new demands brought on by the pandemic in some cases eased these discussions but in others, they were suspended or delayed. Overall, few changes could be attributed to the rising profile of frontline workers in the pandemic. The exceptions were a rise in hourly pay in one UK food retail company, progress towards sector-level bargaining for social care in Scotland and the nurses’ first collective agreement in Kiambu county in Kenya. Most voluntary actions by employers or the state involved short-term bonuses in only the first COVID wave, with no plans for long-term change. The paper reflects on the role of collective bargaining in protecting and revaluing frontline workers not only in the COVID pandemic crisis but also as in the aftermath a cost-of-living crisis has emerged to threaten these workers’ already precarious working conditions and standards of living.

(in collaboration with Praveen Jha, Bruno De Conti)

This contribution will compare reactions to Covid 19 and the role of trade unions in the Brazilian, German, and Indian automotive sectors. Central dimensions will be: the governance of value chains, national systems of industrial relations, and the impact of these on the conditions of work and industry innovation. The structure of the presentation will be the following: After a theoretical discussion, I will build on analyses from three research projects to examine industry trajectories, over the past twenty years until the present. Methodologically, I do this on the basis of selected case studies and expert interviews.

If we consider the result of end-stage development in Brazil, plant unions were struggling to maintain employment levels during the Covid 19 pandemic despite the former president Bolsonaro's weakening of union rights. In India, falling real wages received an additional blow during the pandemic. The vulnerability of employees is significantly more precarious due to the high share of informal employment, the lack of their employment security and welfare state protection, the weak role of trade unions, and the long-standing market-despotic labor-regulation regime in India. From an overall perspective, neither national sector can be regarded as a winner in the global restructuring wave led by core countries of the automotive industry. This is due to a lack of effective industrial policy in both countries, but also to the strategies of the headquarters and the inability of the local actors to intervene in this global division of technological upgrading.

Technological upgrading of the automobile industry in Germany was done in particular in cooperation with the social partners. This is because the German model of corporatist arrangements of a coordinated market economy with a strong role for the social partners and corresponding formal co-determination rights, organizational strength and institutional power resources, whose structures could be drawn on during the pandemic to cushion negative economic effects for the workforce, came into play here.

The theoretical contribution will be to understand the role of Brazil and India as two emerging economies in light of a set of interrelated factors. These include existing power asymmetries in the value chain, the capacities of national industrial policies, and low-road competition in labor policies, albeit to varying degrees nationally.