Inter-union cooperation in multinationals

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Polish trade unions have problems in articulating the relations between different levels of their organisation (workplace, regional/branch and national), exacerbated by the political rift between the two major union organisations, NSZZ Solidarność and OPZZ. In 2002, there have been a number of attempts by unions to formulate joint positions and pursue mutual interests, but these generally continue to be of a half-hearted and strictly ad hoc nature. However, the increasing presence of multinational companies in Poland has raised a need for closer cooperation between local union bodies in these multinationals' Polish operations, especially where there is a European Works Council in place. This article examines the state of inter-union cooperation and examines the case of an innovative joint trade union representation body at the Żywiec brewery group, owned by Heineken.

One of the main problems faced by trade unions in Poland is the articulation of relations between the different levels of their organisation (workplace, regional/branch and national). While this is a problem which plagues many trade unions across Europe, it is compounded in the specific Polish context by the political rift between the two major union organisations, the All-Poland Alliance of Trade Unions (Ogólnopolskie Porozumienie Związków Zawodowych, OPZZ) and the Independent and Self-Governing Trade Union Solidarnosc (Niezależny Samorządny Związek Zawodowy Solidarność, NSZZ Solidarność). However, there have recently been a number of attempts at formulating joint positions and reconciling the unions' mutual interests.

Cooperation in crisis situations

In the second half of 2002, after the national conventions of OPZZ (in May) and NSZZ Solidarność (in September - PL0210103N), there have been a number of initiatives towards the establishment of joint, inter-union 'operating platforms' at levels above that of the individual company, to address crisis situations. The greatest degree of success, in relative terms, has been achieved by the trade unions in the Silesia region, where a preliminary agreement has been reached between more than a dozen union organisations at the sectoral and regional levels, most notably by the OPZZ Miners’ Trade Union (Związek Zawodowy Górników OPZZ) and by the NSZZ Solidarność board for the district of Silesia and Dąbrowa. In late 2002, this loose coalition of unions is engaged in negotiations with the government concerning the latter's programme for restructuring of the mining sector (a general strike by miners is being threatened). This action was preceded by a joint appeal, in October 2002, by the chairs of the NSZZ Solidarność board for the district of Silesia and Dąbrowa and of the OPZZ council for Silesia, in which they called on their affiliated unions to reject mutual animosity, past grievances, and political differences in order to mount a concerted effort to protect current jobs and create new ones.

Also in October 2002, Maciej Manicki, the chair of OPZZ and Janusz Świadek, his counterpart at NSZZ Solidarność, signed a joint letter to Prime Minister Leszek Miller, in which they spoke out in defence of the Gdynia shipyards and of the shipbuilding industry as a whole.

Cooperation at the district level, if not always official and formalised, occurs in many localities across Poland. An assortment of agreements and pacts have been made between the secretariats and sectoral units of NSZZ Solidarność and the OPZZ unions and federations in sectors such as telecommunications, the metalworking industry or construction. The available data indicates that these agreements are of an occasional nature, and also that they are subject to amendment and updating when a specific need/possibility arises for joint action or to mount a protest in defence of mutual interests. Until now, however, the tendency has been that, once such a specific common purpose has lost its currency, the contacts between the unions would promptly loosen, and the agreements would be forgotten.

Cooperation between enterprise-level union organisations

In many Polish business operations within which a number of different trade unions are represented, these unions will cooperate. It is rare for relations between unions operating under a single roof to degenerate into open conflict, except in situations involving what are known as 'yellow unions'– unions created by the directors of the enterprise in question for the purpose of incapacitating the 'real' unions and preventing them from passing decisions contrary to the interests of the business operation. Yellow unions are also resorted to by some employers to prevent the implementation of collective agreements. Such situations, however, are an exception rather than the rule; in general, whenever the workforce and/or individual groups of workers are faced with the same challenge, the unions seek to address them together and to reach some understanding for this purpose. What is more, initiatives of this sort have recently become so frequent at the level of individual enterprises that one might legitimately speak of the emergence of a pattern of collaboration among various unions at the workplace level. It should, however, be noted that these agreements generally do not take on an institutionalised character and can be readily rescinded.

Institutionalised cooperation in multinational companies - the case of the Żywiec Group

With regard to privatised enterprises, an issue of particular importance is the influence of the European Work Councils (Zakładowe Rady Europejskie) which exist in many large multinationals with Polish operations and include Polish representatives in some cases (PL0208106F). A unique situation can be observed in these cases; when the possibility of cooperation is discussed by union leaders at a higher level, any such cooperation appears rather difficult to achieve, yet when the need arises to reach a consensus within a single employing operation, the unions concerned are perfectly capable of readily joining their forces.

A notable example comes from the brewing industry, where a recent study by the researcher Anna Borkowska has examined the situation at the Żywiec Group (Grupa Żywiec), owned by the Dutch-based Heineken. The main findings of this study are outlined below.

In late 2001, there were some 3,000 employees at the four Żywiec Group breweries (some of which comprise more than one facility), with the average union membership rate in the group’s workforce standing at 56%. The highest proportion of union members, at 77%, was found at the brewery in Leżajsk, and the lowest, at 47%, in Żywiec and in Cieszyn. There were 10 different union organisations affiliated with either NSZZ Solidarność or OPZZ represented within the Żywiec Group, as well as several independent organisations active only within a given facility. The high level of union membership was taken by the union leaders as a starting point for efforts to gain more leverage with the Żywiec board of directors.

The Heineken European Work Council (EWC) was established in 1997. On the management side, its members include the deputy chair of Heineken, the chief human resources director and the human resources directors from the individual countries in which Heineken maintains a presence. When Heineken embarked on its Polish venture in the late 1990s, it decided to invite two representatives of the trade unions active at the Żywiec brewery to sit on the EWC, and two more union representatives from Poland were brought on board in 2001. The Żywiec unions were quick to realise that the forms of union activity to which they were accustomed, shaped after the traditional manner prevalent in Poland, might not stand the test of the new reality represented by the EWC. First and foremost, it was feared that this institutionalisation of union activity at supranational level, bringing together unions from all the European countries in which Heineken operates, might have a 'watering-down' effect, marginalising the trade unions from Poland.

The Polish union members who were the first to establish international contacts within the Heineken group and to take part in EWC sessions, called in February 1999 a working meeting for representatives of all union organisations active within Heineken’s Polish operations. At this meeting, a 'joint trade union representation body for the Żywiec Group' (Wspólna Reprezentacja Związków Zawodowych Grupy Żywiec) was constituted, the rationale being that this was the only way forward if the unions wished to have any say within an international corporate structure whose decisions are made outside Poland and whose strategies are of global reach. It was acknowledged that, in such a setting, those Polish unions which insisted on acting on their 'home turf' only, maintaining their independence from other union organisations, would lose their negotiating clout and their access to vital information, if only as regards up-to-date news about developments at the group level.

Gaps in Polish trade union law

In this context of a need to embark on institutionalised, joint action by the trade unions at the Żywiec Group, a shortcoming of Polish trade union legislation became apparent - Polish law simply does not address the activity of unions within multinational companies operating in Poland. All the pertinent regulations have been formulated on the presumption that the directors of the entity concerned operate out of Poland and that the unions may demand information from them; no provision was made for a situation where the board of a company is based outside Poland’s borders. The unions operating within the Żywiec Group responded to this by establishing their joint trade union representation body; it is composed of delegates from each brewery, with their number depending on the size of the organisation in question. The joint trade union representation body has a governing body, the 'delegates council' (Rada Delegatów). The union members concerned drew up a charter regulating their activity in the new situation, and they also formulated provisions concerning cooperation with the Żywiec Group’s board (modelled on analogous solutions followed in the EWC). These various documents were endorsed by the company’s directors, and an agreement was signed in which the detailed means of operation as well as the financing of the joint trade union representation body were enshrined. An agreement followed guaranteeing the continued employment of the Żywiec Group's workers.

Close cooperation among unions

The awareness of shared objectives, common to all union activists within the Żywiec Group, has proved to be an important aspect of the joint trade union representation body’s operations. Within a comparatively short time, it has brought about not only the formulation of a single line adopted by the unions towards the company’s directors, but also – for all intents and purposes – the disappearance of the divisions among different organisations within the individual units. The organisations now speak with a single voice, and they select from amongst their leaders those who are genuinely the best negotiators. According to Anna Borkowska: 'the joint trade union representation body is a democratic entity. There may be a clash of differing views and tendencies, yet the final conclusions are reached by way of a vote. Nobody imposes any solutions or any means of acting upon suggestions. The resolutions are passed following thorough discussion, and the consensus carries something of the views of all the delegates.'

Full joint trade union representation body sessions are held twice every year, and working meetings concerning current problems are organised as required, with the venue rotated between the different breweries within the Żywiec Group. Contacts with the unions on the part of the employer are attended to by the human resources director, who takes part in talks between the unions and the managers of individual breweries and also in those held at group level. The trade unions derive much important information from supervisory board sessions; while their members do not have voting rights within the breweries' supervisory bodies, they do sit in on their work and have the right to voice their opinions.

At present, the Żywiec Group unions are discussing a new collective agreement. To date, there have been a number of such agreements in force within the Żywiec Group, with much variation in their provisions between the individual breweries. The tendency has been for the larger breweries to receive privileged treatment at the expense of the smaller ones. The objective of the work presently under way is to harmonise the provisions of these agreements, improving the position of workers employed at the smaller breweries and cutting back on some of the privileges enjoyed by their colleagues from the large ones. This poses a significant challenge for the unions, which must prove that they are capable of devising a compromise solution which will be palatable to all those concerned, including workers whose privileges will be abolished

The trade unions at Żywiec Group have gone to considerable lengths not to be the avowed 'other side' in their dealings with the board of directors. They have undertaken joint lobbying activity evocative in some ways of the old union organisations of socialist times and of the relations observed today in the construction industry. One example was a protest march staged by brewery workers in opposition to a proposed increase of the excise tax on beer. This solidarity finds strong support in the directors’ information policy towards the trade unions. It would appear that the board appreciates the possibility of maintaining trust in relations with the employees and the benefits entailed. The board’s information policy has been an open one, keeping the unions up-to-date as regards issues such as the company’s strategy, financial situation, possibility for wage increases etc. What is more, the unions are in a position to compare and contrast the information thus received from the directors of Żywiec with data furnished by Heineken within the context of the EWC. Accordingly, both parties operate with full sets of data and can thus carry on discussion as partners; while not all of the decisions reached are entirely to the unions’ liking, they have no reason to 'cry foul' or to suspect that data is being manipulated to their disadvantage.

As a general conclusion, it can be ventured that the relatively good cooperation maintained by the unions and the different levels of management at Żywiec and at Heineken is the result of the policy pursued by the latter company on an international level. The group’s management contributes significantly to the trade unions, providing facilities and premises, invitations to the corporate headquarters, subsidies for training etc. This policy, it is concluded, is certainly a favourable one, animated not by a desire to 'buy off' union leaders in the short term (or, more simply put, to corrupt them) but, rather, to achieve the institutionalisation of dialogue within the company and establish a solid base of collaboration with the workers. Such collaboration runs up against natural limitations, and some conflicts are inevitable – particularly as regards the need to shut down less profitable brewing operations - but overall the cooperation has been quite successful.

Commentary

Trade unions, the only form of employee representation available in Poland (given the lack of works councils or similar bodies), are still limited in their possibilities, especially if one considers their political divisions at central level. While the situation may demand of them cooperation and joint negotiations with employers, the actual initiation of any such cooperation continues to be plagued by difficulties. Any cooperation that does take place among trade unions above the level of individual employing entities tends to be non-institutionalised and occasional in nature; such cases may be fairly frequent, but they do not guarantee permanence of any sort. Within individual employing entities, collaboration between different union organisations is quite common, although each union involved retains complete independence. However, the appearance of multinational companies in Poland has been forcing unions to move beyond ad hoc cooperation, forming permanent inter-union institutions. This has led to a certain blurring of the lines, especially between NSZZ Solidarność and the OPZZ structure, whose roots go back to Poland’s socialist governments before 1989. As a result, the union movement is affected by a schism of sorts, with the units operating within individual employing entities becoming independent of higher rungs of the union hierarchy, in that the latter do not support the formers' efforts towards building joint representation with other unions (or, in some cases, react to them with outright disapproval). In this way, the individual trade unions are reducing, rather than increasing, their chances of becoming 'articulated' trade unions. One might expect that, thanks to the experiences at some multinational companies, Polish trade unions will cooperate to a greater extent than before, and also that there will come into being legal norms which regulate the establishment of inter-union representation – particularly within the context of multinational companies. (Juliusz Gardawski, Institute of Public Affairs (Instytut Spraw Publicznych, ISP, and Warsaw School of Economy (Szkoła Główna Handlowa, SGH)