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Employees in Nordea's Polish subsidiary are turning away from the old 'Solidarność' (Solidarity) to form a new trade union in Poland, headed by Patryk Bak and Wojciech Stachura (photo). The four Nordic financial unions in Nordea now collaborate with the Polish colleagues who today hold the jobs outsourced to Poland by the Nordea Group. "This is a rare success story," says labour-market researcher Nana Wesley Hansen.

In recent years, non-unionised Polish academic staff of Nordea's Polish subsidiary, Nordea Operation Centre (NOC), have taken over Nordic jobs, at lower pay and employment terms. Yet the four Nordic financial unions in Nordea have made a virtue of necessity by supporting their Polish colleagues in their establishment of a completely new trade union in Poland that can initiate collective agreement negotiations with the local Polish management.

The Polish colleagues' new trade union has now become part of Nordea Union Board, a cross-national partnership between the Nordic financial unions in Nordea that has formalised discussions directly with the Group management.

"If the Nordic trade unions - as I understand to be the case with Nordea - manage to create unionisation across national borders, working together to one extent or another to maintain a certain standard of pay and working conditions for their Polish colleagues - this must be the path to take. This is a success story," says Nana Wesley Hansen, labour-market researcher at the University of Copenhagen, who has researched offshoring and how knowledge workers are affected when jobs are outsourced to abroad.

Michael Budolfsen, Vice President of the Financial Services Union Denmark, describes the creation of Union in NOC as a good example of the importance of cross-national trade union work and believes that this will be of benefit to both employees and company in the coming years.

"This is the first step on a long road to ensure that offshoring work tasks does not lead to social dumping. Companies have a great responsibility for making sure that the agreement model used in the 'parent Group' is offshored together with the work, and for making local management aware that they also have a role to play in supporting - or at least not preventing - employees from becoming unionised. We have previously seen this in, for example, UniCredit in Italy, and it is extremely positive that we are now taking the first step in this direction in the Nordic region," says Michael Budolfsen, who is also President of NFU – the Nordic Financial Unions.

In total, Nordea has approximately 700 employees in the two Polish cities that support the Nordic units in the Nordea Group with IT tasks and other back-office functions.

The employees in Nordea Operation Centre have no collective agreement, and according to the President of the new trade union, Union of NOC and Nordea IT Employees, there was not much help to get from the old trade union, Solidarność, which for much of the Polish population primarily stands for the coal miners' struggle and the Polish shipyards. Only 13 per cent of the employees were unionised when, in the spring of 2014, they took the initiative to make a break with Solidarność and create their own union along Scandinavian lines. In December 2014, the trade union was officially approved by the Polish authorities.

The President of the new trade union is looking forward to the cooperation with Nordic colleagues within Union in Nordea. Via different standing liaison committees the now five countries' trade unions have the opportunity for direct dialogue with Nordea's Group management, in order to influence the decisions.

"At NOC we are receiving the jobs that are offshored from the Nordic countries. Each country may perhaps only receive information about part of any such restructuring from the management. We can contribute what we are told, and by combining all this information in Nordea Union Board, we can get a fuller picture, and can better assess advantages and drawbacks for all of the countries' employees overall. In this way we can exert combined influence on the changes," says Wojciech Stachura, who was recently elected President of the Union of NOC and Nordea IT Employees.

Stronger negotiating position

According to labour-market researcher Nana Wesley Hansen, when companies outsource certain tasks to abroad this can put pressure on both individual employees and their trade unions.

"Research shows that the negotiating climate is affected when companies outsource work functions. The unions' negotiating power is impacted negatively when employees feel that their jobs are threatened, since this tells them that there are people in another country, with qualifications as good as theirs, who can do the same work at lower cost," says Nana Wesley Hansen.

Often, solidarity runs out at national borders. Yet if trade unions can manage to create cross-border cooperation, this can be an advantage for the employees in the Nordic countries where jobs are lost, the new colleagues who take over the work, and the company, she explains.

"The advantages are that it's possible to ensure certain minimum working conditions for the new colleagues who take over the work. This eases some of the pressure on the Nordic employees, and perhaps regains some of their negotiating power in relation to the management," Nana Wesley Hansen says.

Besides a collective agreement, the Polish colleagues are also looking forward to better opportunities to resolve some of the problems that are part of being a supplier of services to the other countries in the Nordea Group, both via negotiations with the local management and in cooperation with their Nordic colleagues. As an example, the President names the countries' different banking days:

"We have different public holidays in our respective countries. But since NOC supports the activities in the other countries, this usually means that we work on our own national public holidays. As a trade union we can raise issues of this type at a higher level and discuss them with the NOC management, so that this is not a battle between individual employees and their middle managers," says Wojciech Stachura, who has frequently attended meetings with Nordic colleagues within ’Union in Nordea’ in Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland.

Labour-market researcher Nana Wesley Hansen points out how cross-national cooperation between trade unions can also be an advantage for the management of a multinational company.

"One of the aspects you often see in this type of outsourcing process is that challenges or frustrations arise for the employees who depend on the services that have been outsourced to the new colleagues. This may be in terms of assuring the quality of the deliverables, or things that cannot be clarified because you do not necessarily work on the same days. It can be an advantage for employers to have coordination between the national trade unions, where they can find solutions that are of benefit to the company," she says, explaining how the immediate conflicting interests due to the competition for workplaces often impedes cooperation between trade unions among the countries that are receiving the jobs, and the countries that are losing them.

"It's normally not unproblematic to establish cooperation of this type, and it's also very rarely successful. This is why I see the Nordea example as a real success story," says Nana Wesley Hansen.

(This article was originally published in Nyhedsbrevet Finans  - a weekly newsletter published by Finansforbundet Denmark. The picture shows Patryk Bak (left) and Wojziech Stachura from the Union in NOC.)