IUF and Danone agreement on limiting precarious employment

The IUF and the French-based food products transnational Danone have signed a ground-breaking Agreement on Sustainable Employment and Access to Rights built around a joint commitment to promote “permanent, direct employment as an essential foundation for a sustainable business anchored in respect for human rights.” With this Agreement, Danone and the IUF establish a framework to bring about continuous progress in limiting or reducing precarious forms of employment through a process of monitoring and negotiation.

The Agreement affirms the essential contribution of permanent direct employment to successful business performance and a positive social footprint in Danone workplaces and beyond, grounded in respect for human rights. It details the specific ways in which “fixed-term contracts and outsourced employment relationships may have the effect of depriving workers of the protections and the rights they are due”, and aims to ensure that employment on fixed-term contracts is limited to where it can be clearly identified as temporary and non-recurring. Local management and trade unions, according to the agreement, are to jointly identify the circumstances where fixed-term employment and/or the outsourcing of services may be introduced by mutual agreement, and will regularly review developments in order to limit these forms of employment.

Danone will promote the application of the Agreement at operations in which the company has minority ownership and at Danone Group suppliers. Danone and the IUF will actively encourage local unions and management to engage in the implementation process and will monitor progress through a regular review process at global level.

“Workers and their trade unions have become increasingly concerned by the multiple barriers to the effective exercise of rights posed by fixed-term and outsourced employment relationships,” says IUF General Secretary Ron Oswald. “With this agreement, the IUF and Danone have succeeded in establishing a framework and a practical basis for negotiating concrete solutions which will facilitate workers’ full access to the rights set out in international Conventions and standards. We now look forward to the implementation process.”