Bid to extend social dialogue

Date: 29/02/1996

By Michael Mann

EUROPEAN trade unions are calling on the Commission and the employers' federation UNICE to broaden the social dialogue to take account of specific sectoral interests.

The European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) is urging the Commission to expand the existing social dialogue beyond the current broad sweep approach when it publishes its long-awaited communication on the subject in the next couple of months.

The Commission presided this week over the first in a series of meetings between the social partners examining possible changes to improve the way the social dialogue works.

The ETUC maintains that consultations between employers and workers' representatives are unable to take account of the different concerns of various industrial sectors, because UNICE does not have individual sectoral bodies to match those established by the unions.

Although a regular dialogue exists for the food, retail, banking and insurance sectors, workers in the metalworking and chemical industries, among others, feel excluded from the process, according to the unions.

The employers' federation rejects such criticism, insisting that a broad horizontal body is necessary to represent the whole of industry, and pointing to a 1994 Commission study which concluded that UNICE and the ETUC were by far the most representative groups to conduct the social dialogue introduced under the Maastricht Treaty.

“The current procedures worked fine when we were negotiating rules on parental leave,” says UNICE Secretary-General Zygmunt Tyszkiewicz. “Our main worry is that we don't like having only six weeks to give our view on consultation documents.”

ETUC officials believe that Social Affairs Commissioner Pádraig Flynn is considering handing over responsibility for coordinating the social dialogue to different directorates-general directly affected by each negotiation - a move which they would oppose.

“We want DGV (social affairs) to maintain overall responsibility and for the Commission to improve its internal cooperation,” said one.

As to who should be involved in the dialogue, Tyszkiewicz rejects accusations from UEAPME (the European Union of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises) that SMEs are effectively excluded from the process. “The problem is that they don't have any direct union opposite numbers. Half of UEAPME's members are also directly or indirectly members of UNICE. Nobody can say that UNICE doesn't represent SMEs,” he insists.

The most likely area for change is in the Standing Committee on Employment, set up in 1970 to facilitate direct contact between the social partners and employment ministers.

UNICE believes the committee serves a useful purpose, but should be slimmed down to perhaps involve just those ministers representing the troika - the previous, current and next holders of the EU presidency.

But ETUC is anxious to see whether any new commitments on employment result from the Intergovernmental Conference.

Initial consultations between the Commission and the social partners are concentrating on a draft which puts forward three options: leaving the structure of the social dialogue untouched, making piecemeal changes or making more radical changes.

Commission officials remain cagey about their intentions, but suggest there might be a need to make the procedures less cumbersome in the light of experience gained over the first few years of the social dialogue. But an official stressed: “We merely set the ground rules, and it's up to the social partners to decide who is represented.

Meanwhile, UEAPME Secretary-General Hans-Werner Müller is campaigning to force his members' concerns to the forefront of the dialogue and is lobbying MEPs and all 15 social affairs ministers prior to a Council discussion on parental leave next month.

“The deal did not involve all the interested parties. We must see what we'll do after the Council, whether we attack the deal in the Court in Luxembourg or whether there's some other action we can take,” said Müller.

But he is encouraged that Commission President Jacques Santer has invited SMEs' representatives to talks on his employment 'confidence pact'.