With 22.5 million workers, Commerce is the second largest single employer in the European Union. Since many years, Uni-Europa Commerce – until this year Euro-FIET Commerce – and EuroCommerce are conducting an active social dialogue on the European level. Employment is the main issue for this dialogue, which during the last two years has been focused increasingly on electronic commerce and other technology-related developments.

My own organisation Uni-Europa Commerce is part of Uni, the international organisation for workers in commerce, services and telecommunications. With 16 million workers world-wide, Uni is the largest organisation of its kind. In Europe, we are grouped in Uni Europa.

Our European social dialogue has many functions.

1. Through framework agreements, we can show the way for social partners on different levels to conduct a dialogue and to agree on the conditions for social and labour development in the sector.
2. Through studies and research projects, we create a substance basis for this dialogue as well as for public authorities and other institutions.
3. And, through the dialogue itself, we can promote the mutual confidence, respect and understanding between employers and trade unions, which is necessary for the development of a real partnership.

Our approach to e-commerce dates from 1997, when the Athens University prepared our first study on the social effects. In April 1998, a conference on electronic commerce was held in Greece. Here, we agreed on how to deal with e-commerce in the social dialogue. The report and the conclusions from the 1998 Conference is indeed the basis for our common work.

Both social partners accept that major changes will take place, reflecting on employment and jobs. As commerce trade unions, we want this process to take place in a way which protects employment and improves the quality of jobs.

In the European social dialogue, there are two major elements through which we have agreed to influence the introduction and application of e-commerce and e-business:

1. An e-commerce training project, and
2. A European framework agreement on telework in commerce.

The joint e-commerce training project, which was launched last year, will identify the changes in job profiles for four different functions in commerce. We will look at a retail sales person, a wholesale employee, a warehouse worker and a commercial sales representative.

Based on this analysis, proposals for changes in vocational education and training programmes will be made. These will concern both the training of young people and the training of those already in working life. Finally, suggestions will be made about how this training should be implemented.

We must not forget that the majority of our workers will continue in traditional professions and occupations. Training in understanding and using new information technologies must be given also to them, not only to those who will work in the new information technology jobs. All workers will need basic IT skills and knowledge, to secure their employment and employability as well as to make them competitive on the labour market.

Among the main aims of the e-commerce project are:

1. to help workers to retain their jobs even when they change,
2. to increase the ability of workers to take on new jobs if their previous ones are lost and
3. to adapt the vocational training of new workers to a changing environment in commerce.

A large number of jobs will be lost in European wholesale and retail trade during the next few years. E-business and e-commerce applications will surely lead to job losses in wholesale and retail trade. It is difficult to predict how many will be lost and how many will be compensated by new employment. Experiences from the finance sector would, although not directly transferable, would indicate that the balance could be negative. It will almost surely be negative if major efforts are not made to ensure that those who risk losing or who loose their jobs are not adequately trained for the new job opportunities that are created. A situation with a simultaneous high unemployment and a lack of qualified personnel for other functions must not be allowed to develop in European commerce.

In retail trade and parts of wholesale trade, self-scanning will be another big technology-based job killer. Point of sales cashiers are among the last manual workers in supermarkets, hypermarkets, cash and carry centres and other stores, and most of them can lose their jobs.

How many small and medium enterprises will have to close their doors, losing out to the big competitors who can better use the new technologies that are available, is still an open question.

The overall employment balance in European commerce can come to be be disastrous, with a bank crisis kind of situation hitting commerce, causing a million or more workers to loose their jobs.

The training challenge will be enormous, made complicated by the existing training deficit in the commerce sector. We have traditionally been seen as an industry, which does not require much specialized training of its workers. This mistaken view is still widely prevalent. Where vocational education and training exists, it is often focused on general mercantile skills – that is office skills – rather than on the particular characteristics of a retail and wholesale trade occupation.

The second and at least equally important element of our social dialogue on e-commerce is an agreement on telework, which is presently being negotiated. A first draft already exists, negotiated by Uni-Europa Commerce and EuroCommerce. It will still need the formal seals of approval, but we do hope that it can be signed quite soon.

What makes this agreement special is that it will be a real European framework agreement, addressing concrete labour relations issues. Its aim is to help ensure that the introduction and application of e-commerce and telework is as smooth and harmonious as possible. Only then can commerce strengthen its competitiveness and provide secure and good quality jobs.

The draft agreement wants to put teleworkers in a position which is no respect inferior to that of their colleagues in more traditional jobs. With the reservation that we are still working on the final formulations, the following issues – among others – are on their way into the agreement:

1. The need of telework to be voluntary
2. The contacts with the company and co-workers
3. The costs for equipment as well as insurances and responsibilities towards third parties
4. Working hours, overtime work, holidays, sick leave
5. Guarantees for wage development
6. Confidentiality and the respect for the privacy of the teleworker
7. Health and safety considerations

The proposed agreement includes guarantees also for the full respect for the trade union rights of teleworkers and the possibility for them to exercise these rights using the employer’s equipment. This is based on an important European agreement between EuroCommerce and Uni-Europa Commerce from last year, on fundamental principles and rights at work.