UNI-Europa Commerce met in Nyon, organising in multinationals remains top priority

UNI-Europa Commerce held its annual meeting in Nyon on 22 - 23 November. At the top of the agenda was the work with multinational retailers and wholesalers. With support from UNI Commerce, affiliates in many parts of the world have launched organising projects, to unionize workers in leading companies.

More than 50 trade union leaders participated in the UNI-Europa Commerce meeting in Nyon. Among them were Daniela Rondinelli of FISASCAT, Italy and Michel Enguelz of FGTA-FO, France.

Corporate social responsibility is a new theme in the European social dialogue for commerce. It is also at the heart of any organising or trade union recognition campaigns. Jörgen Hoppe of Denmark, vice president of UNI-Europa Commerce, underlined that this issue will become ever more important as socially aware customers ask questions about the operations of retailers and wholesalers. Hoppe called for a broad discussion about corporate social responsibility within UNI Commerce, in preparation of the Commercial Workers' Summit in Sydney, Australia in April next year.

Antonia Francheschini of Italy, also vice president of UNI-Europa Commerce, presented the European Commission's recent report on dealing with social exclusion. Inclusion, as it is now called, will be a major issue also for the European social dialogue for commerce. The first exchanges on this subject have already taken place with EuroCommerce and the social partners will seek a joint approach to the subject.

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Alex Rüdig of UNI Commerce presented organising projects in Metro, Tesco and Rewe as well as other European multinationals.	Angeles Rodriguez of CCOO told about the cooperation between UNI Commerce and its Spanish affiliates, to secure trade union rights.	Sadik Özben of Tez-Koop-Is informed participants about the continuing problems with Metro in Turkey.	Jörgen Hope of HK Handel who chaired the meeting reported on Corporate Social Responsibility issues, a theme for Sydney.
Annie Cauda Tortay of CFDT Services spoke about the UNI Commerce PPR solidarity campaign, having just returned from the United States.	Erich Reichelt of GPA, Austria said that he is not surprised that Billa creates big problems for commerce unions wherever it goes.	Natasha Michova of the commerce trade union in Bulgaria reported about new problems created by multinationals entering the country.	Owen Nulty of Mandate informed the meeting about the fast economic progress and social dialogue in Ireland. Nico Meijer of FNV Bondgenoten, Netherlands, sits next to him.

In many presentations as well as in the general discussions, UNI Commerce activities in leading multinationals were raised. There has been a fast and positive development of this work as many enterprises have found concrete benefits in working constructively with trade unions, to establish social dialogue and even social partnership. Carrefour and Tesco were singled out particularly - there has been a positive development of labour relations in these companies, although many problems still remain to be dealt with.

The UNI-Europa Commerce meeting also discussed the effects of the enlargement of the European Union. The meeting confirmed the validity of the approach, which was taken at the last Euro-FIET Commerce Conference in Cardiff in 1999. The most important thing is to promote an improvement in standards for the workers in the accession countries. Transition periods for the free movement of labour will be needed in some cases, but equally important is to avoid social dumping in the production of goods and services. The social dialogue round tables, which have been arranged by UNI-Europa Commerce together with EuroCommerce in many accession countries, have played an important role. The next step should now be to bring representatives together from all the accession countries, for a joint discussion with their colleagues from the present European Union member states.

The meeting also confirmed two social dialogue agreements: The agreement on telework and the agreement on older workers.