network of operations will be in a position to resist management’s threat of
relocating work and consequent demands for concessions. Under the second
scenario, unions have engaged in fairly limited cross-border activities to directly
confront MNCs over their FDI and transnational movement-of-work decisions.
Some global union federations have formed ‘world company councils’ comprised
of unions from diVerent nations representing workers of given MNCs, but these
councils appear to have limited themselves to cross-border information-sharing,
consultation, and modest support for each other’s struggles (see e.g. Gollbach and
Schulten 2000 ; Marginson and Sisson 2002 ). There have also been cross-border
campaigns conducted by sympathetic sister unions in the face of aggressive anti-
union eVorts by MNCs (see e.g. Juravich and Bronfenbrenner 2003 ), but these
transnational campaigns are uncommon. Even under the exceptional opportunity
of the European Works Council Directive, which oVers a legally mandated forum
for unions representing various locations of a given MNC across European bor-
ders, few unions have taken advantage of the opportunity to forge even minimal
alliances (see e.g. Beaupain et al. 2003 ).
These coordinated transnational activities to date are undoubtedly too modest
for unions to mount suYcient and sustainable resistance to MNCs seeking to
weaken unions and wrest concessions from them. Whether or not unions will
eventually forge cross-border partnerships for the purpose of negotiating on
a transnational basis with MNCs depends on whether or not they can overcome
substantial barriers. Here, weWnd that diVerences in union organizations and IR
systems across countries make the forging of inter-union partnerships diYcult to
achieve (see e.g. Gennard and Ramsay 2003 ; Hyman 1999 ; and Cooke 2005 a). One
can surmise that the ability of unions to forge partnerships and engage MNCs in
transnational bargaining over FDI and movement-of-work will require that unions
Wrst recognize they are essentially in a prisoner’s dilemma in which cooperation
among them yields the greatest opportunity to inXuence the HR and investment
decisions of MNCs and, in turn, optimize gains for union members. Second, as
players in an iterated non-zero sum game, unions will need to develop strategies
that satisfy the necessary conditions and incentives of cooperation, which are not
easily satisWed but are, nevertheless, not insurmountable (see Cooke 2005 a, for
elaboration). If unions eventually forge cross-border partnerships, the role of
collective bargaining would undoubtedly take on much greater importance in the
formulation and carrying out of global HR strategies.
- 4 The Environmental Context and Issues of Corporate
Social Responsibility
As framed herein, global business strategies and, in turn, global HR strategies are
inXuenced and constrained by both the economic and socio-political contexts
global human resource strategy 497