Transnational company agreements are concluded by one or more representatives of a company or a group of companies on the one hand, and one or more workers’ organisations on the other. They cover working and employment conditions and/or relations between employers and workers or their representatives.
Indeed, the internationalisation of company organisation, mergers and take-overs, the emergence of European companies, the increasing mobility of the factors of production and the ever more transnational scale of restructuring operations bring with them a growing need for transnational negotiation within firms.
Against the backdrop of new approaches to dialogue and corporate social responsibility, companies and workers’ representatives have begun agreeing texts in various forms, drawn up jointly for application in more than one Member State.
These initiatives help to anticipate cross-border employment developments, launch flanking measures for restructuring and manage human resources in transnational companies.
However, the rapid development of transnational negotiations since 2000 already concerned over 10 million workers worldwide in 2012, raising some fundamental practical, legal and political questions for the social actors and the European Union. These issues relate to the discrepancy between the transnational scope of the texts concluded and national norms and references.
The EU supports the development of transnational company agreements through exchanges of experience, financial support, monitoring and studies. An expert group has been set up by the Commission with that aim.
Various reports and studies are available.
Reports
- Commission staff working document SWD(2012)264 - Transnational company agreements: realising the potential of social dialogue
- Commission staff working document SEC(2008)2155 - The role of transnational company agreements in the context of increasing international integration
- Mapping of transnational texts negotiated at corporate level
Expert Group on transnational company agreements:
Results and follow-up
Studies
- Study on the characteristics and legal effects of agreements between companies and workers' representatives (2011): Executive Summary / Final report
- Study on international private law aspects and dispute settlement related to transnational company agreements: Executive summary / Final report / Annex 1 / Annex 2
- Synthesis Report on conciliation, mediation and arbitration in the European Union