Implementing global framework agreements: the limits of social partnership

Global framework agreements, negotiated between representatives of transnational corporations and trade unions, are a form of private regulation of labour relations on a global scale. Conceived and promoted by the global union federations, their numbers have increased considerably over the past two decades. However, as empirical research has shown, their record of implementation has been poor. We attribute this to them having been negotiated within the limits of a labour‐management relationship based on ‘social partnership’. This highly institutionalized setting of dialogue contrasts markedly with the widespread incidence of contested labour relations in subsidiaries of transnational corporations and in particular throughout their global production networks. Yet, workers and their unions at such sites, where global framework agreements are most needed, have mostly not been involved in their negotiation. Instead of relying on ‘social partnership’, we argue for unions to embrace a ‘conflict partnership’ approach, one that recognizes and addresses the tension between dialogue and conflict in labour relations. To highlight our arguments, we present two contrasting case studies from the service sector.