The Community, The Multinational, its Workers and their Charter: A Modern Tale of Industrial Democracy?

The advent of the Single Market is seen as central to the interests and development of multi-national capital based in Europe. Indeed, much of the motivation for the change involved an attempt to strengthen European multinationals in relation to those based in Japan and America. This strategy and its outcomes are reviewed critically. In this perspective, what is referred to as the `social dimension' of 1992 becomes a matter of which approach to the labour market and to employees in the workplace is the most appropriate. The Social Charter, which has aroused much controversy in the United Kingdom, is based on the goal of obtaining labour's consent for, and co-operation in achieving, the necessary adjustments to competitive pressures by granting forms of employment protection and channels of influence. The contrary argument, advanced by the Bruges Group and orthodox economists, is that this, too, is an interference compromising the free workings of the market and so sapping the gains of removing non-tariff trade barriers. The paper considers the possibilities open to European trade unions in this situation and concludes that there appears little hope of controlling or moderating the restructuring processes which 1992 seeks to unleash. There remain limits, however, on the power of multi-nationals and the conclusion is that neither convergence nor divergence are very appropriate descriptions of what is likely to happen in Europe after 1992.