EMF Precarious Work Project
For more secure employment and decent work – Coordinating the European social dialogue in the metal industry
In recent decades there has been a dramatic increase in precarious work in all countries in Europe as well as in the whole world.Not only is there a persistently high rate of unemployment in many EU Member States, but there is also an erosion of what are classified as the ‘norm`, ‘standard’ or ‘typical’ forms of employment, which undoubtedly endangers and worsens the opportunity for employees to gain decent employment, making them in these rapidly changing circumstances, the first victims of the system and of the current economic crisis.
The European Metalworker’s Federation (EMF) has taken an important step in the further coordination of national collective bargaining policies by launching the principle of having European wide common demands. The idea behind this is to highlight one of the major important elements within the collective bargaining rounds in all of the European countries.
The idea of the project is to support the European social dialogue (sub-programme I) by providing a common European policy platform for the national trade unions affiliated to the EMF in order to help them in their work for securing their members decent work and reducing the levels of precarious employment among their members. Thus the project directly responds to the Lisbon strategy and the priority objective for decent work in the European Union.
The common European policy platform will be formulated as a common European demand to be raised in the national collective bargaining rounds by the EMF member organisations.
A conference will be held in November 2009, where representatives from the EMF member organisations will meet and discuss the challenges for achieving decent work and reducing precarious employment among their members in accordance with the Lisbon strategy. On the basis of these discussions a common European demand regarding decent work and precarious employment will be formulated. In a next step these demands and proposals will be implemented in the collective bargaining rounds of all countries concerned and thus the project contributes to the social dialogue on national and European level. Furthermore several publications and a movie on precarious employment will be disseminated after the conference.
In order to prepare the conference two preparatory meetings will be held. The purpose of these meetings will be to work out the conference documents and policy papers, to organise the event and to prepare a survey on decent work and precarious employment.
Furthermore a meeting to evaluate the outcome of the conference and to prepare for the dissemination and follow up on the conference conclusions will be held.
Film - call for tender
The EMF wishes to produce a documentary short film to illustrate the extent of Precarious Employment within the European metalworking sector, which will be shown at the EMF Collective Bargaining Policy Conference in Madrid on 17th & 18th November 2009. The topic of precarious employment will be the subject of a 4-year joint campaign in the course of which the EMF and its affiliated organisations will undertake to tackle this issue via social dialogue at all pertinent levels.
Contacts:
For more secure employment, against precarious work
The EMF Collective Bargaining Policy Conference 2009 launched the 2nd Common Demand:
“For more secure employment, against precarious work”,
which will be included in the collective bargaining demands of all its 75 affiliated trade unions and in future collective bargaining rounds throughout Europe over the next four years.
