Session Three

Report from the Study Circle in the North West Region of the United Kingdom

Activity One: The experience of globalisation in other countries

We all read the reports which had been sent in by the study circles in the other countries. We then discussed the contents and came up with a number of points. These are as follows:

1. That there were many similar issues and effects being raised in every report
2. That one of the most common issues was that of transnational companies benefitting from European, National and Local funding objectives under the guise of potential closures/redundancies/relocation.
3. That with the threat of potential closure/relocation trade unions are forced into negotiations which nearly always result in vastly reduced terms and conditions for the workers. They are forced into accepting these changes for fear of losing jobs. It's such a common theme, experienced by a vast majority of workers and their representatives, and we still seem to be impotent in dealing with it on any significant scale - this includes Governments' inability to tackle it.
4. That although we may have similar issues when dealing with transnational companies, we seem to have different priorities on how we deal with them. Cultural differences, political differences and self interest were discussed by the group.
5. That we are not very good about passing on information and experiences to each other. That this applies, locally, at national level, and at European and International levels.
6. We discussed the possibility of producing some sort of charter which identifies strategies/action points. It was pointed out that this has been tried on a number of occasions, but the Study Group was concerned that if attempts have been made previously then it obviously was not widely known.

Activity 2: Case studies of Positive Action

The UK Study Group read each one of the case studies and following a general discussion made the following points:

1. That there was much concern regarding European Works Councils. Some of those concerns involved the role of the TU rep on the EWC - that we don't train the rep; we don't identify what role they need to play; that there is a danger of moving away from the mainstream trade union membership. Another concern was that on a European Trade Union basis we don't appear to share information or common standards/goals. It was felt that EWC's could be used as a distraction and paid lip service to consultation.
2. That, in reality, whenever there was a conflict of interest, workers and their representatives will always protect their own workplace and this needs to be discussed in more detail.
3. That we can't just rely on the workers, we need to have a detailed discussion on the role of consumers and communities.

Finally, we discussed the collation of useful web-site addresses, and everyone agreed to start contributing to this.

That concludes the report from the UK Study Group for Session Three

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