The chemicals and pharmaceuticals industry is a key player in the global economy. Advances in health care, new active substances and the introduction of future-oriented and environmentally friendly technologies are the key words that frame the special role, but equally the special responsibility of this sector of industry.

The ILO estimates employment in the chemicals and pharmaceuticals industry at 14 million people worldwide. In 2005 chemicals and pharmaceuticals industry companies together marked up sales of € 1,776 billion.

The chemicals industry is globally networked like scarcely any other sector. In many cases it is the forerunner of developments in the international division of labour. To cite recent examples:

• Pharmaceuticals industry research centres are becoming concentrated in the vicinity of leading universities, in particular on the U.S. east coast.

• Increasingly, drug testing is being done in India, where medical practitioners are equally qualified, but test patients much cheaper.

• First stage downstreaming in petrochemicals is shifting steadily but surely towards the Middle East.

In addition to this, trade unions and their members are finding themselves exposed to increasing “horse trading” of business units between multinationals. Competing companies are being taken over, whilst other business areas are being sold off because management sees them as no longer belonging to the core business. This is producing uncertainty among employees, who in many cases foot the bill with their jobs, when managers’ strategies, implemented with the help of expensive consultants, fail to bring the desired effects.