First regional collective bargaining meeting

Forty delegates from nine countries met in London on 3-4 March in the first of three regional EPSU meetings to discuss social dialogue and collective bargaining. The initiative is part of a European Commission funded project set up to provide affiliates a new way of debating the issues, to get greater participation in debates and consider some more strategic issues in the run up to the EPSU Congress in 2009. The participants had a chance to exchange ideas and experiences on how to make the European social dialogue more effective. One key proposal was to allow more time in EPSU meetings

This year EPSU is experimenting with a series of regional meetings to discuss collective bargaining and social dialogue. The aim is to provide another forum, in addition to the annual conference, in which to discuss policy and information and possibly to identify issues that are of particular interest to specific groups of countries or in particular sectors. The first meeting took place in London on 3-4 March and provided some valuable input into the organisation of the main annual conference in Brussels on 9-10 December. Further meetings will take place in Berlin on 13-14 May (for affiliates

EPSU’s working group on collective bargaining in the energy sector in Central and Western Europe met for the sixth time on 21 April to discuss the latest developments in negotiations and to look at updated information on wages and profits in some of the main European energy transnational companies. On 23 April the VDSZSZ Hungarian energy union organised a meeting with Czech, Slovak and Slovenian unions to discuss a range of issues including collective bargaining developments in the respective countries. [Read more at > EPSU (EN)->http://www.epsu.org/a/6456] [And at > EPSU (EN)->http://www.epsu