Crisis talks fail to reconcile social partners

Date: 04/06/1998

By Simon Coss

A QUESTION mark hangs over the future of the EU's social dialogue process following this week's crisis summit between employers, trade unions and the European Commission.

Delegates who attended the behind-closed-doors session variously described the talks as “frank”, “open”, “honest” and “hard”.

At the heart of the disagreement between the social partners, made up of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), private sector employers' federation UNICE and CEEP, which represents public sector employers, appears to be a fundamental difference of opinion over what the social dialogue is supposed to do.

The system enshrined in the Maastricht Treaty's social chapter enables the Commission to ask the social partners to negotiate agreements on social policy. These are turned into legislative proposals and presented to EU governments in the Council of Ministers.

Both sides appear to accept that changes are needed to the social dialogue, not least because of the advent of the single market, the imminent launch of the euro and the introduction of an employment chapter in the Amsterdam Treaty. But there are major differences over the direction in which those changes should lead.

“The situation is very confused and there are a lot of questions which need to be answered,” said ETUC spokesman Wim Bergans. “I'm afraid UNICE still doesn't know what it wants.”

Bergans complained that UNICE president François Perigot had repeatedly stressed the importance of taking decisions at national level wherever possible at this week's meeting. “Perigot said what's on the table is national responsibility and we didn't understand this,” he explained.

UNICE contests this negative interpretation of its president's comments. “Mr Perigot said the social dialogue is not an end in itself, but rather it is an option that we use at our discretion,” said a spokeswoman.

UNICE secretary-general Dirk Hudig was even more direct in his analysis. “There is an underlying tension, with one side wanting to draw everything to European level with collective bargaining at European level. But that is not the way things are going,” he said.

Hudig argues that as labour market conditions and unemployment problems differ widely between the EU's 15 member states, practical changes can only be made within individual countries. “You have to go down to national level and solve things there,” he insisted.

Hudig, like Perigot, says his organisation will use the social dialogue system when it feel it is useful, but claims the Commission sometimes asks the social partners to discuss issues which should not be the subject of EU-level rules.

The most recent example of this, he said, was the suggestion by Social Affairs Commissioner Pádraig Flynn that they draw up a set of rules to cover the rights of workers in national companies when their employers planned major restructuring moves such as mass redundancies.

“If you look at worker consultation in national companies, I think the title itself disqualifies it from negotiations,” said Hudig.

It was UNICE's refusal to negotiate on this issue which led Flynn and Commission President Jacques Santer to call this week's crisis meeting.

Observers within the Commission accuse UNICE of “simplifying” the whole question of what the social dialogue is about. “Many, perhaps even most, directives regulate at national level,” said one expert, arguing that governments had a degree of leeway in interpreting them.