Freedom of association: Battering ram or Trojan horse?

Abstract

ABSTRACT Integrating core labour standards (CLS) into the operations of the Bretton Woods institutions and the WTO has become a primary goal of the international labour movement. The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) and the ILO have persuaded the IMF and the Bank to accept CLS, including freedom of association and collective bargaining. Since they can impose painful sanctions on violators, incorporating labour rights enforcement into the international organizations that regulate the international economy has great appeal for the labour movement. I argue that there are potential dangers in this effort. The ILO's understanding of freedom of association is distinctly liberal and promotes the formation of 'free' as opposed to powerful trade unions. In this liberal conceptualization, many labour regulations that enhance labour's power by limiting union fragmentation and increasing bargaining power are considered to be violations of freedom of association. In practice this has meant that the ILO makes policy recommendations that encourage union competition and that discourage centralized collective bargaining. Although framed in different language, these policies mesh well with the agenda of the Bretton Woods institutions. An analysis of Indonesia and Argentina shows how the ILO's understanding of freedom of association has mixed consequences for the strength of the labour movement. KEYWORDS: Core labour standardslabour rightsfreedom of associationInternational labour OrganizationWorld BankInternational Monetary Fund Notes 1. See http://www.ilo.org/dyn/declaris/DECLARATIONWEB.INDEXPAGE, accessed on 17 September 2004. 2. Information about the International Confederation of Free Trade Union's (ICFTU) efforts can be found on its excellent website, http://www.icftu.org. 3. This deferral to the ILO is palatable for the IMF because international labour standards are largely silent on issues of labour flexibility. 4. In 2000, the ICFTU conducted a survey of its affiliates and found that about half had been contacted by the IMF (CitationICFTU, 2000) 5. The ICFTU has tried to hold the World Bank to its word, and after the ICFTU publicized labour rights abuses by Grupo M, the Dominican Republic's largest export processing zone operator, the IFC required Grupo M to respect all of the CLS as a condition of the loan (CitationICFTU, 2003a) 6. The text of all ILO conventions can be found at http://www.ilo.org/ilolex/english/index.htm 7. The Digest represents a compilation of key rulings of the Committee on Freedom of Association that together constitute the ILO's official position on how freedom of association should be implemented. Diversity of opinion certainly exists in the ILO, especially between country offices and the Geneva headquarters. In this paper, the focus is on the official position of the ILO. The Digest is available at http://www.ilo.org/ilolex/english/index.htm 8. This legal framework also fails to prevent employers from registering company unions as legitimate unions 9. In theory because the registration process does not require proof of membership, so representation has been based on claimed rather than actual membership. Since claimed membership figures are so unreliable, the government has recently embarked in an effort to verify membership. Unions must present either photocopies of membership cards or signed statements by workers attesting to their membership in the union 10. This assessment is based on field research in numerous industrial areas in Indonesia (Bandung, Bogor, Bekasi, Tangerang, Surabaya, Sidoarjo, and Gresik), where the author collected data from local Manpower offices and interviewed numerous union officials 11. In July 2004, the Ministry of Manpower reported that there were 18,352 plant level trade unions and only about 9,100 collective labour agreements (CitationILO/USA Declaration Project 2004). These figures are probably high. National data is notoriously inaccurate since local Manpower offices no longer report to central authorities. In most cases, data collected by the author both from unions and from local Manpower offices showed that far fewer than half of unions have concluded collective labour agreements 12. Drake estimates that even after the repression of the 1970s and early 1980s, Argentine unions enrolled about 48 to 56 percent of wage earners. In 1984, 67 percent of wage earners in the industrial sector belonged to unions (1996: 176) 13. The new law also rolled back many provisions that increased labour flexibility 14. In 2003, the government proposed to amend this to 5 percent (CitationILO, 2003)