From 31 October to 2 November 2022 took place in Sofia, Bulgaria, a seminar about “Western Balkans trade unions: active players with strong civic and social commitments towards accelerated EU integration”, organised by PODKREPA CL (Confederation of Labour PODKREPA), with the support of EZA and funded by the European Union. The seminar was part of the EZA special programme for workers’ organisations of the Western Balkans.
35 representatives of workers’ organisations from Bulgaria, France, Poland, Austria, Serbia, Albania and the Republic of North Macedonia participated in the seminar.
The seminar’s objective
- To analyse the actual situation in the region, building adequate picture of the involvement of social partners in policy-making, the EU accession’ and the recovery after the pandemic.
- To support the improvement of the capacity of workers ’organizations to have more effective contribution to the design, implementation and monitoring of the EU-Plan for WBs.
- To contribute for strengthening the role of collective bargaining, social dialogue and workers' participation as key factors to democracy at work and the respect of the rule of law.
Exchange good practices to activate trade unions to support reforms, to counter corruption and promote transparent and non-discriminatory access to pre-accession funds.
Description of the seminar
- The seminar begins with political interventions on the WB region’s prospect of EU membership, energized by the war in Ukraine.
- First political panel was followed by key expert presentation “A momentum for change in Western Balkans: new priorities and policies in support of the EU enlargement process”.
- During the second panel was presented and discussed a very important topic module on the challenges, faced by trade union movement in organizing new members in difficult times of multiple crises:
- Discussions were followed by national intervention on the main lessons learned after the pandemic, on the state of social dialogue and the social partner’s initiatives in the context of the recovery. A special focus was turned to trade unions ’incentives to enhance the creation of decent jobs and to build back a better and more sustainable future for working people.
- Round table: “Time to put an end to the anti-trade union practices in Western Balkans and to guarantee to working people free choice to organise and act together.”
- Think-thank session: „Social partnership must make the difference: what changes should introduce workers’ organizations to increase their capacity to deliver tangible results, timely support and adequate services to trade union members?”
- Closing session for conclusion and evaluation.
Key ideas
- The region of Western Balkans, as allover the world, is faced by a profund cost-of living crisis which overlaps with the climate emergency, the digital transition, and citizens fatigue due to the experience of the COVID19 pandemic. Inflation, driven primarily by large and persistent increase in energy & food prices and by the war in Ukraine is a greatest concern around Western Balkans - the Europe’ s poorest region. This is the main challenge for workers‘ organizations in the region - to stem the rising costs of living and to protect jobs and income’s levels.
- Cost-of-living crisis has highlighted the need for increase of salary’s level and trade unions need to be at the forefront of managing the challenges. Collective bargaining, including collective actions, is the key to garantee fair and sustainable outcomes across different sectors, regions, and countries. Measures, advanced by trade unions, as well the trade unions‘ involvement, is the exact tool to getting through this crisis.
- To overcome the fragmented industrial relations, trade unions must develop pro-working people policies to deal with the high unemployment and large-scale impoverishment in the region. The possibility of EU membership remains an important motivator for regional social actors, but they alone cannot solve persisting problems, related with the sluggish economies, corruption and the lack of reforms. That is mailnly due to the extensive overlap among government, business and the criminal underworld. Practically, political and economic decisions are remaining concentrated in small circles, while enjoying a near monopoly over the spending of pre-aceession funds and over the mass media, continuing at the same time to systematecally erode institutions for social partnership. In this context, trade union community is called to have a transformative role aiming at stimulating positive social change, contributing to acheive a culture of peace, active citizenship and dialogue.
- Social dialogue structures and practices in WBs are still weak -their‘s a need to make an effort - especially government - to support the development of capacities of trade unions and employers’ organizations so that they can be effective facilitators of social dialogue. In that context, the promotion of participatory social dialogue is fundamental to address the challenges and to seize the opportunities.of the post pandemic recovery. In addition,inflation crisis may be use as an opportunity for trade unions to rethink how redistributive policies may be combined with policies securing stable, well-paid jobs, fair sharing of economic gains and sustainable development of the communities.
- Bearing in mind that 70% of the emigrants from Western Balkans are aged between 20 and 45, social partners and governments have to jointly introduce mechanism to reverse that brain drain and to encourage the sustainable return and placement of skilled workers in developing sectors such as IT, digitalization, robotics, design, etc.
- Intraregional mobility, must be encouraged, as a very important tool for the development of Balkan countries. The free and active circulation of regional human resources within the region will enhance its social and economic integration.
Conclusions and recommendations
- In addition to the difficult history of the Western Balkans region comes the game of the aspiring 'new empires', with Russia and China trying to increase their leverage and weaken the EU. In order to achieve a peaceful future in the region, we need to stop focusing on the past and to strengthen the work of civil society organizations in promotion of the regional cooperation and to bring the region closer to the EU.
- Increased political, economic and social distress and armed conflict in Ukraine have exacerbated pre-existing development challenges in the Western Balkans region and further exposed inequalities. Social dialogue is a proven powerful tool in these contexts to stabilize social relationships and pave a way forward, by gathering economic and social actors and governments around the table. Looking forward, there is a need to further promote participatory social dialogue as a fundamental means to address the challenges and seize the opportunities that emerge from changes in the world of work and technological advances. Beyond its usefulness as a mechanism for ensuring the coherence and legitimacy of social, economic, and environmental policies, social dialogue is a basic tenet to the construction of inclusive societies,
- The prospect of EU membership is an incentive to bring forward reforms in the Western Balkans. Reforms are key for the European path, but more importantly, they are crucial to improve political and economic governance, rule of law, media freedom and conditions for civil society. This is in the interest of all citizens of the Western Balkans because local economies are still uncompetitive, with underdeveloped practices for social and civil engagement, participation and partnership. National social partners must be more directly involved in the accession’s policy-making, so as to make sure that working people are protected from errors in the labour and social aspect of reforms, related with the integration. In addition, as concatenation of profound crises is making the current situation very precarious, working people really need a port in this gathering storm and a positive way forward. Logically, in times of weakened institutions and general social disintegration, trade unions are that “port”, because they are in position to provide consensus with the society, considering their basis - the solidarity-driven ideology and the vast organizational traditions.
- In that context, collaboration between civil society organizations and local communities, as well better cooperation within representative workers’ organizations must be encouraged and supported by state institutions. Thise is the real way to bring the expertise and knowledge of social partners' organizations into policy-making. Social partners do have superior knowledge of the specific needs of their constituencies, that is, of companies and workers, in a newly emergent crisis situation and, therefore, by drawing on their expertise, faster and improved policy decisions can be made to improve the economic and societal situation. Especially in a crisis situation such as that triggered by the consumers’ prices crisis and the war, the need to integrate the expertise and knowledge of a wide range of actors to develop effective policies is certainly beneficial.
- At the same time, trade unions’ work needs to become more inclusive to the challenges and needs of working people. TUs are to create specific policies and legislative initiatives to better promote rights at work, to facilitate access to the labour market and to quality jobs. Here, develop concrete policies on specific topics such as on-job training, mediation, social protection, work-life balance, precarious work, platform work, zero hour contracts, discrimination is crucial.
- Providing reliable information to working people is very important – now adays everybody of us is overloaded with a huge informational outflow – unnecessary or useful, false or reliable. We receive data on a very large number of issues, problems hand we even have not time for proper orientation. In such an informational chaos, the most important is to have reliable counselors – at the workplace trade unions are those organization, which may help to working people, concerning employment issues. Here, the capacity to craft new ideas and broaden the scope of topics that the trade union is addressing to get closer to working people. Identify areas that working people are interested and make links on key topic, such as: environment, migration, gender equality, precarious work and non-standards forms of employment, platform work, social justice, etc.
- Last, but not least. making partnership on topic-specific issues. and identifying organizations to build partnerships is with key importance. No doubt, trade unions can easily find allies when it comes to labour/equality/environmental issues. There are many local/ national/ international organizations working those topics that can contribute - at the same time this will increase the visibility of trade union outreach and can even result in new members.
Investing in the image of trade unions is essential. In general, image of workers’ organizations is considered an asset which gives chance to differentiate itself among other social players, to win public acceptance and to attract new members. Public relations, of trade unions must be activated and enlarged to community relations and media relations.