Cross- Border Union Alliances and Transnational Collective Bargaining: A Case Study in a Canadian MNC

Abstract

The last two decades have seen an emergence of newforms of internationalemployee representation within multinational corporations (MNCs). In EUmember states, the management at MNCs find themselves having to deal withstatutory European Works Councils (EWCs) while at amore global level somestudies show a multiplication of solidarity networks and cross-border unionalliances put in place by reinvigorated Global Union Federations (GUFs). Inorder to evaluate the extent to which these cross-border alliances can support thedevelopment of transnational collective bargainingwithin MNCs, this articledraws on a single case study conducted recently ina Canadian MNC in thecommercial printing industry, namely Quebecor WorldInc. In recent years,before the dismantling of this Canadian multinational, union officials sought tocoordinate the various unions in this company internationally and to open up anew space for collective bargaining at the transnational level by negotiating aninternational framework agreement with its management.