The European Commission will present, on 25 January, a Communication and a draft EU Council Recommendation on strengthening social dialogue in the EU, in which it will, among other things, call on Member States to create an environment conducive to multi-stakeholder dialogues between European social partners and to promote collective bargaining frameworks, while the recent EU directive on adequate minimum wages has rightly called for more workers to be covered by collective bargaining.
Its recommendation, which prescribes the basic conditions for developing this social dialogue, aims to complete this European directive, which is currently being challenged by Denmark and Sweden.
“Social dialogue arrangements and processes vary across Member States, reflecting the countries’ different histories and economic and political situations”, says the Commission in the preamble to its Communication, a draft of which EUROPE has seen.
But “the share of workers covered by collective agreements has declined significantly over the past 30 years. It decreased from an estimated European average of around 66% in 2000 to about 56% in 2018, with particularly great declines in Central and Eastern Europe”, the Commission notes.
While the rate of employers has remained relatively stable, the rate of unionisation has decreased (on average) in all EU Member States, it adds.
“However, most new forms of employment, including the growing number of self-employed and single workers, suffer from a lack of representation”.
The draft recommendation therefore proposes to “promote strong and independent workers’ and employers’ organisations and measures to strengthen their capacity to act”. Access to relevant information needed to participate in social dialogue is also advocated for.
Recognising the full autonomy of national social models and the organisation of the social partners, the Recommendation addresses three main elements: “consulting the social partners on the design and implementation of economic, employment and social policies; encouraging the social partners to negotiate and conclude collective agreements, while respecting their autonomy and the right to collective action; and promoting support for social partner capacity building”.
The recommendation states, for example, “that social dialogue has two components, bipartite and tripartite, both of which require an enabling environment. Collective bargaining is part of bipartite social dialogue and can take place in the public and private sectors at all levels, including cross-industry, sectoral, company or regional”.
The proposal recommends that there is an enabling environment for bipartite and tripartite social dialogue that respects “the fundamental rights of freedom of association and collective bargaining, promotes strong and independent workers’ and employers’ organisations, includes measures to strengthen their capacity, ensures access to the relevant information needed in order to participate in social dialogue, promotes engagement in social dialogue on the part of all parties, adapts to the digital age, promotes collective bargaining in the new world of work (...) and ensures appropriate institutional support”, the draft recommendation says.
The text also recommends that Member States ensure that organisations are properly representative, with objective criteria established in consultation with trade unions and employers’ organisations. And where both union and elected representatives are present in the same company, appropriate measures should be taken to ensure that the existence of elected representatives is not used to undermine the position of the unions concerned or their representatives.
The social partners must also be protected against any unlawful measures detrimental to the exercise of their right(s) to collective bargaining.
In its draft Communication, the Commission also announces other measures at its level, such as the modernisation of the EU sectoral social dialogue, which covers more than 80% of the European workforce with 43 Sectoral Social Dialogue Committees (composed of 65 European employers’ organisations and 15 European trade union federations). It will discuss with them the opportunity to review the Commission Decision 98/500/EC on the establishment of these dialogue committees.
“This renewed focus on strengthening social dialogue sends an important signal at a time when Europe is looking for sustainable solutions to the cost of living crisis and negotiating the green and digital transitions”, the European Trade Union Confederation and its deputy secretary-general, Claes-Mikael Ståhl, had already anticipated in an opinion piece on Social Europe.
“What is important to ensure is the application and promotion of the right to organise and the right to collective bargaining, while fighting against the dismantling of trade unions”, the Danish MEP from The Left, Nikolaj Villumsen, said to EUROPE ahead of the official presentation of the communication.
“We know that the best way to promote social dialogue and collective bargaining at EU level is by integrating collective bargaining in other EU policy areas – for instance by making companies access to EU funding or participation in public tenders conditional on collective bargaining agreements”, he stressed.
Links to projects: https://aeur.eu/f/51o ; https://aeur.eu/f/51p (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)