Industrial Relations in Europe 2012 - European Commission - Europa

Date
announced
Country Company Sector Announced number of
jobs created/destroyed
13-12-2010 PL LM Wind Power
Services
Wind turbine
manufacturing
+200
10-12-2010 SI Bisol Solar manufacturing +230
12-01-2010 DK Siemens
Windpower,
Aalborg
05-08-2010 DK Siemens
Windpower,
Ballerup
Windmill production +130
Windmill production +200
Source: European Restructuring Monitor, events database, Eurofound
5.7 Conclusions
Overall, the views of social partners on the industrial relations implications of the greening of the
economy have changed from initially critical towards a more positive and supportive, yet
differentiated, stance. At international, European and to varying degrees the national level, the
social partners are actively involved in shaping policy responses to climate change and
environmental protection. However, greening as such is not a topic of major importance to the
social partners. The social partners at sectoral and company level in particular tend to be less active
in this area, with the notable exception of the good practices cited in this chapter. In addition, the
current recessionary times have perhaps also served to shift the social partners’ focus away from
this agenda. In this regard it would seem crucial that the higher level social partner organisations on
both sides of industry work to ensure a trickle-down of their climate-change policies so that the
social partners at lower levels (in sectors, regions and companies) can implement them on the
ground.
There is also something of a gap between the level of participation and mobilisation of the social
partners in the “old” and “new” Member States (the EU-15 and EU-10) and the degree of their
exposure to these issues. The latter exhibit much higher shares of workers in the high-carbon
industries in which major adjustments need to take place 97 , while the social partners and
governments are often not as active. The European level social dialogue is a forum where learning
processes between the social patterns of different countries can be promoted. For more details on
social dialogue in the Central and Eastern European countries of the EU, see Chapter 2.
97 See Commission Staff Working document: “Exploiting the employment potential of green growth” SWD(2012) 92
final.
224