What is social dialogue?
The term "social dialogue" is used to designate globally all discussion and negotiation initiatives jointly undertaken by the workers and their employers. These discussions generally focus on working conditions but can also cover other issues such as the training of workers, recruiting methods or pensions. The main objective of these discussions is to achieve agreements that are satisfactory for both parties. The agreements lay down the standards which the workers and their employers undertake to observe. Thus, social dialogue is a space for discussion and negotiation where the players in a given field of activity set themselves the standards governing their behaviour.
The most widespread application of the social dialogue is collective bargaining which results in the signing of collective agreements laying down labour rules for a given period of time. Social dialogue can also result in statements laying down a position jointly adopted by the workers and their employers on specific issues.
Social dialogue is carried out at the level of a given territory: it can be a whole country, or a region or one or several municipalities. The edu-dialogue.eu website is devoted to a very specific form of social dialogue at the level of the European Union. Besides the territory aspect, you have the aspect of the sector of activity. Social dialogue can relate either to several sectors of activity jointly, or even to all sectors: it is then called cross-industry dialogue. It can also relate to one sectoronly (sectoral social dialogue). Here, we are dealing with social dialogue in a specific sector: that of education.
So that social dialogue can take place, workers and employers must be represented by the appropriate bodies. The workers are represented by trade unions and the employers also have structures that represent them during social dialogue. These representative structures are what we call the social partners. We have a bipartite social dialogue when dialogue is only carried out by the social partners. When a third party (generally public authorities) takes part in the negotiations, we have a tripartite social dialogue.
Who are the social partners in the sector of education?
The teachers' unions are naturally the representatives of the workers. So far as the employers are concerned, it is less easy to identify them. In the sector of education, employer status can indeed be given to several players: the national public authorities in charge of education, regional and local authorities, interim management bodies ("education councils", "organising entity", etc.) as well as head teachers. All these players can, at a given point in time, carry out the tasks of an employer: pedagogical programming, recruiting staff, drafting and signing work contracts, paying wages, sanctions, etc. Thus, the employers' representatives, within the framework of the social dialogue, are chosen by all the players taking part in the employer's work. Depending on the respective situation of each country, the employers are not always organized as such within a representative body.
What is the European social dialogue?
The desire to organise a social dialogue at the level of the European Union emerged during the building of the European Economic Community . The prospect of a common market indeed called for the organisation of labour at Community level. The international coordination of certain industrial activities led, from its beginning, to the set-up of discussions bodies between representatives of national trade unions and employers organisations in order to establish the sectoral norms of this new international area. So the very first shape of Social Dialogue at European level was sectoral and found its development through the sectoral joint committees, of which the first was for the Mines sector, set-up in 1952. Around 15 of these committees were set-up after, however without leading to the building of a real European system for industrial relations. From the year 1980, the European Social Dialogue shifted to a more flexible and less binding shape through the set-up of the informal working groups. A new start for the Sectoral Social Dialogue was given by the European Commission in 1998 (see below the following question).
The 1980’s were also the moment for the launch of the cross-sectoral Social Dialogue, at the instigation of the President of the European Commission at the time, Mr. Jacques Delors in 1984. Between 1985 and 1993, a bipartite and cross-industry European social dialogue was conducted by the social partners organised at that level: the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) representing the workers, the Union of Industrial and Employers’ Confederations of Europe (UNICE) representing the employers of the private sector, and the European Centre of Enterprises with Public Participation (CEEP) representing the employers of the public sector. During that period of time, the European social dialogue was not yet included in the Treaty and resulted in the adoption of joint declarations without any binding force.
In 1991, the European social partners signed an agreement which was subsequently integrated in the protocol on social policy and annexed to the Treaty of Maastricht (Protocol on social policy, 1993). From that moment onwards, it was possible for the European social partners to negotiate cross-industry agreements which, in the absence of formal opposition on the part of the European Commission and of the European Council, can lead to European directives, then transcribed in the national law of all the Member States. However, these agreements cannot concern wages, the right of association, the right to strike, the right to impose a lock-out. This provision was integrated in the Treaty establishing the European Community (Amsterdam, 1997) in articles 138 and 139. To date, three such agreements, which thus resulted in European directives, have been adopted. They concern parental leave (1996), part-time work (1997) and fixed-term contracts (1998). The cross-industry social dialogue also led to voluntary agreements concerning teleworking (2002), lifelong learning and training (2002), work-related stress (2004) and equality between men and women (2005). Articles 138 and 139 of the EC Treaty also lay down that any initiative of the European Commission in the field of employment and social affairs requires consultation with the European social partners.
Since 2001, a tripartite social dialogue is also being conducted at the level of the European Union. The European social partners together with representatives of the European commission and of the European Council meet ahead of the "Spring Summit", where the European Heads of State and Government discuss the economic and social policies conducted at Community level. These meetings are the meetings of the European Troika. The results of their discussions and negotiations are then integrated in the agenda of the Summit. The European Troika also meets in the course of seperate meetings covering the fields of macroeconomic policies, employment, social protection, education and training.
Since the year 2000, the European Spring Summits examine the evolution of the Lisbon Strategy which concerns all the European economic and social policies. The European social dialogue and its institutional applications are an important element of the Lisbon Strategy.
What is the European sectoral social dialogue?
In 1998, the European Commission paved the way for a European sectoral social dialogue by calling for the setting up of bipartite sectoral committees (Communication '"Adapting and promoting the social dialogue at Community level" COM-1998-322). To date, thirty-three sectoral committees have been set up at the request of the players of each sector. They consist of a maximum of 54 representatives of the social partners, comprising an equal number of employers' and workers' representatives. The sectoral committees adopt their own rules of procedure and their annual work programme. The European Commission provides a Secretariat for the committees and takes over their running costs. Sectoral committees constitute therefore some fully recognised Social Dialogue entities. Their practical operation is provided by the European Commission but their political role is fully held by the social partners on an autonomous basis.
Sectoral Committees establish autonomously their internal rules as well as their annual work plan. Therefore the first issues to be treated by the social partners in a Sectoral Committee are related to the committee itself: what will be the topics for the discussions, what topics are excluded, what will be the discussion procedures and how will the outcomes be followed-up.
Sectoral Committees produce different types of joint positions, depending on their target and political goals. According to the goals decided by the social partners, the outcome of the committees can be addressed to the social partners’ national members, the European institutions or to the national authorities. On the social partners’ demand, the outcome can also be integrated in the discussions at cross-sectoral level.
In certain cases, the sectoral social dialogue can autonomously contribute to the production of agreements to be implemented in European Members States. Following the same procedure as the cross-sectoral Social Dialogue, the sectoral agreements can be implemented at national level either through the national practices and procedures or through European directives. So far, agreements leading to directives regarding various aspects of working conditions were concluded at sectoral level in the following sectors: Maritime (1998), civil aviation (2000) and cross-border services (2004).
In order to give a clear picture of the potential outcomes of a Sectoral Committee, we refer to the typology realised by the Observatoire Social Européen*. All of these outcomes are made and disseminated under the legal basis of articles 138 and 139 of the EC Treaty.
* Observatoire Social Européen « Dialogue social sectoriel », pp. 7-9, Bruxelles, 2003
Of course, this only applies in those fields for which the European Union is competent. In the case of education, such a system could be considered for certain aspects of working conditions and a sectoral committee could also produce recommendations concerning the contents or the organisation of the education systems, but it could never adopt any kind of binding decision in a field for which only the Member States are competent.
Another kind of potential outcomes by a Sectoral Committee are tools aimed to provide a basis for discussions among the social partners such as surveys, statistics, external analysis etc. These tools are elaborated by the Committees themselves, if necessary with a financial and technical support from the European Commission.
The social partners can also, if it is their preference, use the committee for good practices and information exchange, without producing any joint documents.
Why is such a system necessary for the education sector?
The functioning of the social dialogue in the education sector is very uneven in the countries of the European Union. It can be very effective when its procedures are firmly established and its agreements are complied with. It is still too weak in several places where procedures do not guarantee its existence sufficiently clearly and/ or where the agreements are not adequately applied by all players. With a view to generally improve social dialogue in the sector, a European sectoral committee would more particularly permit:
- to exchange information, knowledge and good practices between all the players of the sector,
- to strengthen international solidarity,
- to remind the duties and rights of each players through a European authority truly dedicated to the sector,
- to strengthen the influence of the sector when decisions are reached at European level.
A Sectoral Committee is the voice of a professional sector in the building of Europe. With such a formal entity, a professional sector reinforces its influence on the European scene, in its capacity to be pro-active as well as for its self-defense.
The education sector is well placed on the agendas of the political discussions conducted at European level, particularly since the launching of the Lisbon strategy and of its European programme concerning education: « Education and training 2010 ». These policies concern all the players of the sector and have an impact on the evolution of national education systems. If this key sector were to be represented at European level, it could thus set its own agenda and its own priorities and significantly reinforce its impact on the decision-making process of the European institutions.
This would take place while taking into account the specific features of each level of education, the national specific features and the respective interests of each player. The sectoral social dialogue, like any other European system, has to respect the principle of subsidiarity, meaning that the policies and standards derived from it should complement national policies and standards but not replace them.
How can this system be set up?
The setting up of a European sectoral social dialogue committee is a political and institutional process which takes place both at the national level and at Community level. When we reflect on the history of the various processes which lead to the setting up of sectoral social dialogue committees, four main stages can be identified:
- The first stage consists in obtaining, through appropriate studies, an overview of the situation of the social dialogue in the concerned sector in the European Union. So far as the education sector is concerned,this work has been done by the ETUCE.
- Then, a general mobilisation of the sector in favour of the project must be organized in each country. In practice, this is done by organizing a number of conferences and seminars on the subject for the players of the sector. In the case of education, the series of regional seminars organized by the ETUCE is part of the second stage of the process. When this stage will come to an end, a sufficiently significant part of the sector must formally agree with the principle of the project to be able to go on.
- Organisational adjustments might prove necessary as e.g. a European body representative of the employers does not exist for all sectors of activity. Now, its existence or representativeness are essential for the process. Thus, for example, the players of the hospital sector have set up the « hospeem » organization which is representative of the employers of this sector in the process which led to the setting up of a sectoral committee for hospitals (learn more about this). In the case of education, a structure representative of the employers of the sector has yet to be set up before going on with the process.
- Finally, to set up a sectoral social dialogue committee, an application has to be submitted to the European Commission.The Commission shall decide on the basis of this application whether it commits itself to cover the costs and provide the secretariat of the said committee, or whether preliminary mobilisation work is still necessary. The Commission will then check the representativeness of the said organisations by calling for an external audit which will measure the empirical degree of representativeness of the concerned organisations. The social partners submitting the request for the setting up of a sectoral committee must be recognized as being representative of the players (management and labour) of their sector and must be authorized to conduct negotiations both at national and at European level (Commission decision COM 1998 2334). Once all the formalities have been completed, the sectoral committee draws up its rules of procedure and work programme. The process is then completed and the European sectoral social dialogue can start.
