Social dialogue capacity building

FOI Administration Manager John B. Scicluna, together with Malta Chamber of Commerce representative Tonio Farrugia, represented Malta's employers at a workshop entitled "Social dialogue capacity building at sectoral and company level in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta and Slovakia".

The workshop, which was organised by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, was held in Budapest on May 4 and 5 and was part of a European Foundation project on social dialogue capacity building.

The project aims to help the new EU member states, as well as Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania and Turkey, to build social dialogue capacity by gathering social partners, government representatives and researchers to investigate organisational, financial and skills capacities to engage in sectoral and local level social dialogue.

The project has a number of phases including the drawing up of national research reports by national experts and the holding of comparative social dialogue workshops to finalise these reports; to discuss strengths and weaknesses; and draft foresight projects for social dialogue for anticipating and managing change.

The workshop included presentations by Anneli Sillanpää, DG Employment and Social Affairs, Brussels, on the "EU Commission perspective on sectoral social dialogue approach"; by Joachim Hülsmann, Association for Social Security Policy and Research (GVG), Köln, on "National level perspective - comparative overview on social dialogue capacity building at national level in the EU10 and in Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey"; by Ludek Rychly, ILO, Geneva, on "ILO's perspective on social dialogue at sectoral and company level"; and by Matthew Higham, UNICE, on "ETUC, UNICE and UAPME joint project on social dialogue capacity building".

A recommendation that was raised during the workshop which concerned Malta, was that the best way forward for the development of social dialogue at sectoral level was to have a fresh look at the existing wage regulation orders, many of which have not been revisited for several years, and, where possible, amalgamate them into a smaller number.

Other Maltese workshop participants included Anthony Azzopardi and Victor Bruno Olivier (Department of Industrial and Employment Relations) representing Government, and Michael Parnis (General Workers' Union) and Anthony Micallef Debono (Confederation of Malta Trade Unions) representing the workers. Edward Zammit (Department of Public Policy, FEMA, University of Malta) was the national expert. Other participating tripartite teams came from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Slovakia.