Los acuerdos marco internacionales: sentando las bases de la negociación colectiva de ámbito supranacional

Abstract

There are currently more than two hundred international framework agreements (IFAs) in place, signed between transnational businesses and international trade union federations. IFAs spread considerably at the beginning of the 21st century, when most of them were reached. In general, these agreements deal with compliance by the transnational companies in their value chain with the basic labour standards set by the ILO. However, it should be stressed that certain IFAs also include provisions about employment, pay, working hours, industrial health and safety and training, bringing them closer to a labour agreement. Nevertheless, they are not international collective agreements, as they have no regulatory framework.

Trade union organisations have adopted IFAs as imperfect, incomplete forms of tools for transnational collective bargaining and industrial relations, as a key part of smoothing the way and establishing the basis for their eventual institutionalisation and minimal regulation of the labour market at international level. Meanwhile, companies do not see them as the result of an industrial relations exercise and confine them to the sphere of corporate social responsibility, together with ethical codes. At the same time there is a certain amount of controversy over them among jurists and experts in the field, though most label them as standards for corporate social responsibility.