The Transnational Firm Collective Bargaining in Europe: Historical Dynamics, Ways and Challenges

Abstract

The directive on European works councils of 1994, insistently demanded by trade unions, has been a decisive factor for the subsequent development of the transnational firm collective bargaining. But it has also been a source of problems for these organizations, as long as it established a new European channel of representation that was in part out of their control. Considering the lack of a regulatory framework for the collective bargaining in the transnational firms, the European trade union federations established their own internal rules in order to get the control back and support an exclusive right of bargaining and signing transnational agreements. Nevertheless, this dynamic faces the persistence of other bargaining practices. Among others, those developed by German and some other countries transnational firms that want to keep the control of their own bargaining practices.