From February 8 to 10, 2023, Palma de Mallorca hosted the international seminar “The European Social Dialogue: a common commitment. Progress and setbacks in social dialogue regulations and trade union legislation”, organised by USO, in cooperation with EZA and funded by the European Union. The seminar addressed the different realities that occur in Europe regarding collective bargaining and union work and the representation of workers. Representatives of workers' organisations from 11 European countries participated in the seminar.
The inauguration was carried out by Iago Negueruela, Minister of the Economic Model, Tourism and Labour, and spokesman for the Government of the Balearic Islands, who highlighted the fundamental importance of social dialogue when it comes to being able to shape decisions at the union, business and government levels. Negueruela has highlighted the relevance of social dialogue "as a pillar of the autonomous communities, being the instrument that means that the voice of workers and businessmen must be taken into account to set the government agenda."
Piergiorgio Sciacqua, co-president of EZA, thanked USO for organising this seminar and stressed the impact of covid in the world of employment, which has marked a revolution that imposes new work organisation models.
Joaquín Pérez, general secretary of USO, has stressed the support of EZA in setting up seminars of this type to discuss issues that concern workers and, above all, "to propose solutions, putting the people and efforts to build a strong Europe. In this seminar, we have before us the challenge of building a social dialogue for the future”.
During the seminar, different voices, and systems from eleven countries were heard, with points in common, but also particularities. Among the points in common, we can highlight a general decline in membership in recent decades, a loss of credibility in the work of unions, little connection with young people or the attempt, by different governments, to undermine participating unions in collective bargaining to legislate without hindrance.
However, in terms of the loss of affiliation and little youth affiliation, we have known the case of the Czech Republic, with a direct job in the training centres, before reaching the labour market, which has resulted in a sustained growth of affiliation since it hit rock bottom in 2016, and, furthermore, with a growth in youth affiliation.
With respect to the general thought that unions do not represent a value for society, several speakers have raised the question: does it harm us that our negotiations and agreements are universally applicable instead of for members? Are we not spreading the idea that it is not necessary to join a union to benefit from the labour improvements that they get? Furthermore, are the workers aware, in this way, that it is the unions that obtain these benefits? In Italy, even non-members can vote for union representatives. Or the lack of regulation of social dialogue allows any association to negotiate and sign agreements, sometimes completely anti-union, by unions chosen by the company.
This, perhaps, is a starting point for another debate, in another seminar: how to make the work that the unions carry out more visible to all and demonstrate our usefulness in order to grow the affiliation ratios.
Ratios that, in general, are low in all countries, except for the Netherlands, 80%, and Sweden, with 72%. However, also in Sweden they have noticed a progressive loss of affiliation in the last decades, from the previous 92%.
We have talked about umbrella systems, such as the Portuguese. A Social Economic Council under which everything fits, from labour legislation to the most social, and where not only unions are present, but also NGOs. However, there is talk of an insincere negotiation, with proposals that have already reached the table agreed upon by some members, leaving others out. Portugal has been precisely the country that has spoken the most about the loss of rights in recent years: not only salary loss with the last agreement, but also in terms of the fact that employers now have the right to denounce the agreement at the end of its validity and leave your workers with basic legislation. A fact that already happened in Spain with the previous labour reform and that in Portugal, de facto, is not being applied, but is legislated and can be applied at any time.
Little regulated are the Swedish system, where there is no obligation to have unions, although sometimes government and unions can meet, and in Germany, where there is not even a legal definition of what a union is. This is also the case in the Netherlands, where elections are regulated in companies, but social dialogue as such is hardly regulated. However, there are 11 positions in it, so it is quite plural.
In the case of Spain, the analysis has focused on the limitations on freedom of association established by the Organic Law on Freedom of Association and the Workers' Statute which affect both institutional participation and the free holding of union elections. On the one hand, this direct representation in the company is divided into two ways to hold elections: the first, free way for the most representative unions to call elections wherever they want, regardless of whether or not they have representation there; and second-rate union elections, where unions without previous delegates, even if they have affiliates, have to convene a workers' assembly so that they can request the right to hold union elections.
This obstacle to the rest of the unions to gain union delegates causes that the 10% of representativeness that is requested to participate in the social dialogue is even more difficult to achieve. On the other hand, in the Public Administration, at the work centre level, 10% must be obtained twice if it is divided into two types of workers: civil servants and manual labourers. In addition to the fact that the negotiation at the local or regional level, of those directly elected by the workers, is conditioned by a large system at the national level that can invalidate those agreements.
The fact that there are only two voices, always the same, in social dialogue does not promote competition between unions and there is, therefore, less demand and more conformism in collective bargaining. For this reason, an update of the Spanish trade union legislation is urgently needed to make it more plural.
Quite different is the Belgian consultative system. In this case, considered with its possible imperfections, as an oasis of participation, the unions present in the negotiation of national legislation are joined by multiple advisory bodies, at the national or regional level, on purely labour or social issues, in which there is a broad participation of Belgian civil society organisations.
In France, workers' representation is highly departmentalised and organised at different levels. From the peak of the pyramid, the federations and sectors start on the one hand; territorial representation on the other. And it all ends at the level closest to the worker: the company. There are also various levels of negotiation with the different administrations or with employers, depending on whether it is legislation or collective agreements. But they are always consultations or social agreement, social laws are never negotiated. In addition, France is currently witnessing a collapse of social law, both at the level of laws and collective agreements. A figure of French legislation that caught the attention of other countries is the local delegate.
Finally, and to highlight another particularity of this vision by countries, we focus on the exercise of the right to strike in Germany, supported in part by union funds. This is a difference between being affiliated or not, since only the affiliates will have that financial support during the strike from the union. A way of guaranteeing that, if you must fight for labour rights, the economic damage from exercising the right to strike will not be an obstacle.
To close the session, we have addressed social dialogue in the supranational sphere. Thus, the defence of trade union freedom can go through the ILO or through different community bodies, such as the European Court of Human Rights or the Council and the European Parliament. After the pandemic, when social dialogue has become topical again, a debate started again on whether to regulate social dialogue. Perhaps, after years of working in the shadow, the time has finally arrived for the unions and for an open, plural social dialogue, with more unions and with civil society speaking up to the highest levels that they must defend... and listen to the whole of the citizenship.