Globalisation of labour markets and international systems of industrial relations

This paper explores the need for and more so the possibility of developing international systems of industrial relations in response to the increasing globalisation of labour markets. Due to increasing internationalisation of employment relations national systems of collective bargaining and industrial relations have become challenged. The reason is that the scope of their competences is limited to act within the nation state and therefore they are unapt to deal with issues that need to be solved at an international or transnational level. In order to deal with the regulation of internationalised labour markets it would thus seem that there is a need for internationalisation of systems of collective bargaining and industrial relations as well. At the EU level the European Social Dialogue (ESD) has in periods provided promises of a potential for developing towards such an alternative. However, the road towards fulfilling such a promise seems far. At the global level the International Transport Workers’ Federation’s (ITF) campaign against flags of convenience (FOC) has developed into a system of collective bargaining with relatively efficient structures for control and enforcement. Therefore, there could be reasons to draw some lessons from the ITF FOC campaign in the future development of the ESD. This paper will focus on the ESD, the challenges this system is facing and its future potential as a system of industrial relations. The analytical framework for the paper is Luhmann’s theory on autopoietic systems and the paper will be divided in four parts. Firstly, the starting points, applied method and reasons for using systems theory as the basis for analysis will be briefly explained. Secondly, the paper will explain the challenges that the ESD is facing in terms of its future potential as an autopoietic system. In this analysis, I will draw on examples from different sectors and themes dealt with within the ESD. Thirdly, I will present some examples on how similar challenges have been met and dealt with within the ITF FOC system. In the concluding section I will highlight possibilities for developing and dealing with the ESD challenges based on the analysis in the previous sections.