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UNI-Europa
Commerce addressed EU Conference on enlargement and social dialogue: Social dumping with a Walmartization of employment and working conditions is not welcome in European retail and distribution, said Jan Furstenborg at a recent European Union Conference on enlargement and social dialogue, in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The conference, with some 200 participants representing social partners and government authorities, focused on a broad range of industrial relations issues in connection with the entry of new member states into the EU in May this year. Speaking on behalf of UNI-Europa Commerce, Jan Furstenborg underlined the relevance of the European social dialogue for commerce. - As European social partners, we share the vision of a commerce industry producing good quality services for the European consumers, relying on competent personnel, employed under secure and good conditions, he said: - Our latest agreement is a significant joint statement on corporate social responsibility. Commerce is the first economic sector to reach such an agreement in the European social dialogue. - It has always been clear for us that the social partners in Central and Eastern Europe and in the Baltics must be fully integrated in our European work and in the social dialogue for commerce. And our many European agreements are our tools when we work for a development of commerce and distribution in Europe's new market economies, which combines business success with secure and good employment. Multinationals dominate in commerce - No other industry changed as fast and as thoroughly as commerce, when the political and economic changes started in Central and Eastern Europe in the early 1990´s. It was the first major industry to be genuinely privatised. The transition was accompanied by a massive influx of foreign enterprises. Today, leading multinationals from the European Union dominate commerce, with Germany-based Metro and Rewe, and UK-based Tesco being the largest traders of the region. - The reality for commercial workers and their trade unions changed over night. To ensure a continued trade union presence, social dialogue and collective agreements, new kinds of European cooperation and action was called for. - Thus, we started to accompany commerce trade unions in transition countries, in their own change and capacity building. The responsibilities were clearly divided between us: - As a global and European trade union, we negotiated, and then used, European agreements. The important ones were the agreement on fundamental principles and rights at work, and the joint statement on corporate social responsibility. Our objective was to ensure that workers in the multinationals also in reality had the right to join a union, without harassment by managers on any levels. Company level agreements on workers' rights - We negotiated company level agreements, and worked together with central management, to implement them in practice. - With Europe's largest retailer Carrefour, we concluded a global agreement which secures the basic right of all Carrefour workers worldwide. - With Metro, we launched cooperation to ensure that the organising work of Solidarnosc in the company's Polish Real hypermarkets and Metro cash & carry wholesale markets could proceed properly, and that collective agreements were negotiated which met both the needs of the employer for a flexible and competitive operation and the needs of the workers for secure and good jobs. - This concept is now followed up in other countries, including – for the first time ever – in Russia. - In Tesco, a social partnership agreement, based on the company's successful British model, was negotiated with Solidarnosc a few years ago. UNI Commerce helped to negotiate this agreement, which confirms the fundamental rights of Tesco's Polish workers and sets the rules for union activities in the company as well as for social dialogue and collective bargaining. Together with the UK management, we then took the initiative for negotiating a similar agreement in Hungary. - We have cooperated with the Rewe management in Germany to get problematic labour relations in the Czech Republic and in Croatia in on the right track. - Next week, at ILO headquarters in Geneva, we will sign a global agreement on workers and trade union rights with the leading Swedish multinational apparel retailer H&M, expanding this concept to new parts of commerce. We promote organising, social dialogue and collective agreement - All these and other approaches to promote unionisation, social dialogue and collective bargaining have been accompanied by capacity building and training measures. Organisers and trade union representatives have been trained by us and our affiliates both at home and abroad. In this way, good practices have been used to build a new social dialogue culture. - It is obvious that our experiences, as a trade union, have been positive. I believe that also the leading companies with which we work have a similar view. Social dialogue supports competitiveness - Social dialogue and good employment conditions support competitiveness. They contribute to a high quality of personnel, lowering the high turnover rate, and to the responsibility and engagement of workers. These leading traders get a stable labour environment, which allows them to expand and develop their operations. - I will finally come back to the link to the European social dialogue. Together with EuroCommerce, we have created a culture in European retail and distribution, which promotes corporate social responsibility and mutual respect between employers and workers. A precondition to social dialogue and partnership is that workers and employers are well organised and have the capacity to work together. This has been the message of our round tables in the region, and this we are actively following up with employers' associations as well as individual companies, on the basis of our concrete European agreements. |
