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	Union files unfair labor practice complaint with NLRB March 27, 2002 Global Framework Agreement August 10, 2004 All the articles for Labor Rights

Social rights, European Works Council:

Executive management must stop holding back

After toiling to create an international group with a staff of 19000 in about thirty countries, Daniel Valot has difficulties in finding his footing regarding social issues.

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The Chairman shuns the issue of social rights in the Group

During the Group committee meeting held on 11 Mai 2004, the Chairman tried to dodge our questions regarding:

  compliance with the Group’s obligations within the scope of the NRE law [1] dated 15 may 2001 concerning sustainable development, corporate social responsibility and corporate environmental responsibility,

  compliance with the obligations set by the International Labour Organization, to which the Chairman of the Group personally committed by subscribing to UN Global Compact in 2003:

1. Freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining
2. The elimination of all forms of forced or compulsory labour
3. The effective abolition of child labour
4. The elimination of discrimination in respect of employment and occupation.

He adjourned the presentation of a report which would «deal with sustainable development» without indicating any target date. Answer to shop stewards (Délégués du Personnel), published one month later was not more specific.

No date of issue has been given yet.

The Global Compact, as the NRE law, however, both require the presentation of a report.

The Union contract that sets rules governing Group Committee specifies the following:

«Article 8 - Global Compact
Members of the Group Committee shall receive the yearly report (or any other report) describing how the Group supports the Global Compact».

Executive Management fails to comply with this union contract.

A 2003 annual report that disregards the Group’s commitments regarding labour standards

In his message to Employees by e-mail dated July 23, 2003, Daniel Valot wrote regarding membership in the Global Compact «by doing so we have underlined our commitment to the fundamental values of human rights, labor and the environment» (French version indicates labor rights, «les droits du travail» [2]  [3] ).

One year after, what progress has been made ?

None: Annual report for year 2003 indicates (page 14) that «Technip makes every effort to apply the same standards of technical, social, and environmental quality and performance wherever it operates».

It is not clear how the term «social performance» fulfils the obligations set by the Global Compact concerning freedom of association and effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining of employees of the Group’s entities, or concerning elimination of discrimination in respect of employment and occupation.

It is true that the annual report lists actual actions regarding health and safety issues and gives actual figures regarding safety issues, which it does not regarding social issues.

The Group’s executive management only presents as achievements skills development plans and support to the Second Chance Foundation. This does not address the requirements set regarding respect of union rights and absence of any discrimination (items 1 and 4 above).

Regarding the item it calls «Social Dialogue», the Groups management only mentions in annual report for 2003 the negotiation with a view to harmonize social benefits further to the transfer of our colleagues from Boulogne to Technip France. Actually, this negotiation was carried out under satisfactory conditions and will lead to the signature of an agreement, which will compensate all the existing specific benefits of Coflexip’s employees without affecting any of the benefits of Technip France’s employees. This agreement should be signed by all unions on Thursday 1 July.

But regarding the international social rights issue, Executive Management seems today to feel satisfied by the announcement effect created by its joining the Global Compact. It maintains under a veil of secrecy any information regarding the actual labour conditions in subsidiaries (such as Chennai), and is more than timid when it comes to making concrete commitments.

However, if, to please shareholders, Executive Management wishes the TECHNIP Group to be classified among groups with a fair social and environmental behaviour, it needs to ensure transparency regarding social conditions in the various entities of the Group and it must at last commit to take concrete actions.

Several immediate actions are obvious:
  the presentation of a comprehensive report in compliance with article 116 in the NRE law
  the presentation of a comprehensive report under the Global Compact

To reach this goal, it must take the initiative to take actions demonstrating that its commitments are sincere. We have made concrete proposals during the Group Committee meeting, such as the Group’s Management sending a message to all employees in the Group to inform them that TECHNIP is ready to support any creation of an employees union in each of the subsidiaries and to discuss the definition of a corporate set of basic social benefits within the Group. This could for instance lead to a global corporate framework agreement, i.e. a union contract applicable to the whole Group. We have also proposed that the Group’s management should contact national unions in each country concerned to inform them that the Group would not interfere with any of the Group’s subsidiaries becoming union.

This is what «supporting and promoting these principles» means.

Technip’s European Works Council, at last?

Finally, the Group’s Executive Management must also adjust its behaviour in the negotiation for the creation of the European Works Council.

Today, the third meeting of the Special Negotiation Body has been convened to negotiate an agreement for the creation of TECHNIP’s European Works Council.

SNB members are representatives appointed by unions of the various European entities of the Group. Members representing employees are the following: three French representatives, one of whom is a CGT representative from la Défense, one representative from Belgium, one from Finland, one from Germany, one from Italy, one from Netherlands, one from Norway, one from Portugal, one from Spain and one from UK.

During the second meeting, held in December 2003, all employees’ representatives from the different countries presented a joint draft agreement, presented by a single spokeswoman.

Since this meeting, Executive Management would not set negotiation going. It chose to wait for the completion of the sale and redundancies operations that affected German subsidiaries of TECHNIP, whose staff where cut from 2900 to 408, and a similar operation in Finland, cutting 595 jobs.

Executive Management kept slowing down the creation of the European Works Council, which should have been created more than three years ago. We had to take actions (requests for Labour Inspector’s interventions, mails, etc.) to obtain each of the three SNB’s meetings to be convened by Executive Management. Today, Executive Management wishes to obtain the signature of an agreement: its up to it.

What is needed is just to allow today’s meeting to be a real negotiation meeting, i.e. a meeting during which Employer’s representative will take into account the amendments presented by the SNB members.

Our requests are in particular the integration of the French legal definition of the European Works Council, which the Executive Management truncated in its draft agreement by deleting the term «consultation», and a fairer calculation of the number of EWC’s members per country as a function of the number of employees in subsidiaries, and compliance with the rights of the EWC for the appointment of its experts and the definition of their scope of assignment.

[1] a new law requiring publicly-traded firms to expand public corporate reporting to include social and environmental impact. Social issues include human resources issues such as hires, lay-offs, work schedules, pay rates, social benefits, equal opportunities, and health and safety, work conventions. Environment issues include water consumption, energy consumption, land use, emissions, impact on biodiversity, etc.

[2] http://www.technip.com/francais/pdf/GC_francais.pdf

[3] http://www.technip.com/english/pdf/GC_anglais.pdf