In the morning of Monday 29 May, Michael Pram Rasmussen, the chairman of Maersk, informed around 2,000 shareholders at the Maersk annual general meeting: “We have initiated a constructive dialogue with the International Transport Workers’ Federation, an umbrella organisation for many unions all over the world, with which we cooperate. The basis has been our policy with regard to freedom of association and the union’s wish to improve its dialogue with the AP Moller-Maersk Group globally. We believe that such a dialogue can be in the interest of both parties.”

The announcement, which startled business journalists, came following a number of meetings over several months between the steering committee of the ITF Maersk Network and senior company representatives. Maersk is one of the largest transport companies in the world, the largest container shipping operator, the fourth largest port terminal operator and the largest port trucking operator in the world.

What then is this global dialogue? The company has agreed to a basic commitment to the principle of collective bargaining in all its worldwide operations. This means the company is saying that it is ready to accept union representation, wherever employees seek it through legitimate processes, in any of its workplaces.

"Such dialogues with major companies can help move us towards stronger unions at the workplace"

The job of the dialogue is to make sure this commitment is taken from being a set of words in a company mission statement to a reality in the workplace. The dialogue will also aim to provide a kind of “early warning system” through which any disputes – primarily about any alleged violation of basic union rights unresolved at local level –`can be brought to the attention of the global company headquarters.

This all may sound simple and straightforward, but it has involved a painstaking process of building trust on both sides. There is still some way to go before the mechanisms of how such a dialogue might work are sorted out. There are many questions hovering over the scope of such a dialogue: about how the company and the Network interpret its commitment and about how fast the process should move forward.

The ITF believes that such dialogues with major companies can help move us towards stronger unions at the workplace and even wider union representation throughout a single company with many global operations. Such initiatives require as a prerequisite, however, a strong core of unions with some level of global spread in the company.

They need unions committed to gaining a better understanding of their companies’ worldwide systems along with a strong commitment to active local union organising and international coordination. A number of similar dialogues are being actively considered with other companies. At a meeting held at the offices of the Danish union 3F in April, more than 60 representatives from unions organising Maersk employees in 28 countries committed themselves to just such a set of goals and gave a unanimous go-ahead to taking this particular global initiative forward.