GDF Suez launches international social dialogue

The French energy and services group GDF Suez (214,000 employees) has signed an international framework agreement with three global unions. The three-year agreement will provide a framework for those involved to promote global social dialogue and to negotiate at this level on topics such as training, heath and safety, and, more innovatively, restructuring and climate change. It also shows the company’s complete support for many major international standards.

On 16 November 2011, the management of GDF Suez signed a global agreement on fundamental rights, social dialogue and sustainable development (529Kb PDF) with three international union federations – the International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers’ Unions (ICEM), the Building and Woodworkers International (BWI) and Public Services International (PSI).

This international framework agreement, according to GDF Suez, ‘is the first of its kind in the world and represents an extension of the social dynamic in which the group has been engaged since its creation’. This agreement marks the launch of a global social dialogue by GDF Suez. It negotiated at European level to create a European Works Council in May 2009, and signed two other agreements, in February 2010, with the European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU), on employment and skills developments and health and safety. ICEM General Secretary Manfred Warda said: ‘ICEM intends to hold these principles to be the new measuring bar for global framework agreements.’

Fundamental rights and equal opportunities

The agreement affirms the full support of GDF Suez for the following major international standards:

• the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights;

• OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises;

• ILO Tripartite Declaration of Principles Concerning Multinational Enterprises and Social Policy;

• UN Global Compact;

• ILO Declaration on Fundamental Rights at Work;

• ILO Convention 94 on labour clauses in public contracts.

The agreement also applies to all the group’s subcontractors and suppliers.

GDF Suez will facilitate access to employees by trade union or other employee representation under agreed conditions. The signatories have also made a commitment to ‘promote and encourage positive and constructive industrial relations inside all GDF Suez companies and their business partners’. A further GDF Suez commitment is to fully support equal opportunities and equal treatment of all employees – regardless of age, origin, nationality, religion, culture or political or sexual orientation.

Sustainable employment and climate change

The agreement includes a commitment, relatively rare in this kind of agreement, to stable and sustainable employment. The group recognises the importance of secure employment for both the individual and for society through a preference for permanent, open-ended and direct employment. The signatories also state that they wish to reduce carbon emissions and will cooperate to ensure that any necessary adaptation takes place in a way that protects the rights and interests of the employee and that the impact of any such changes are designed and implemented in an agreed, fair manner.

Implementation and dispute resolution

As the group operates in a decentralised way, all group companies will propose their implementation of the agreement within the framework of joint action plans. Accessible and objective indicators will be used by employer and trade unions to monitor the application of the agreement. A steering committee with representatives from management, each global union and trade unions not covered by these federations, will review the agreement annually and discuss further cooperation. In case of a complaint or an alleged violation, a five-step procedure is instigated. If the conflict cannot be resolved by the steering committee at local or national level, , the signatories may seek mediation using a jointly-selected mediator.

Framework for global social dialogue

This agreement builds a framework to promote social dialogue at global level. Management and the global unions intend to conclude ‘additional, more specific agreements covering areas of further cooperation’. The parties announced their intention to conclude agreements in specific areas, such as training, occupational health and safety, restructuring – a topic which has never before been mentioned in such an agreement – and sustainable development/climate change.

Commentary

This international framework agreement follows the trend of a small number of European transnational companies trying to foster social dialogue at international level, using tools such as global works councils or union federations. GDF Suez’s decision to support social dialogue is interesting, because Suez, which merged with Gaz de France in 2008 to create GDF Suez, has a long history of transnational social dialogue with the worker representatives of its European Works Council.

Frédéric Turlan, Human & Employment Relations Agency (HERA)