Volume 43 part 3 (December 1998)

Summaries

Sigrid Koch-Baumgarten, Trade Union Regime Formation Under the Conditions of Globalization in the Transport Sector: Attempts at Transnational Trade Union Regulation of Flag-of-Convenience Shipping
The article deals with an outstanding example of transnational trade union cooperation in transport industry. It analyses the attempts of trade unions organized in the International Transportworkers' Federation to establish a system of multinational industrial relations and collective bargaining in the flags-of-convenience shipping, which integrated national trade unions and their politics in international problematic interdependencies. Although based on egoistic national special interests and without formal restrictions on national sovereignty the cooperation leads to an international regime. It regulates the rights to organize and represent crews on ships of convenience in industrial relations, minimum standards for working conditions and incomes, and procedures for the multinational decision-making process and management of conflicts. The trade unions succeeded in regulating about 20 per cent of flags-of-convenience shipping and in establishing a multinational control of national collective bargaining, which is integrated in a system of international governance in the trade union sphere of activities. It is based on an imbalance of power between trade union organizations of industrialized and developing countries within the ITF and on specific conditions in transport industry, and therefore not transferable to other industries.