Industrial Relations in Europe 2012 - European Commission - Europa

demand for healthcare services and social services, coupled with an ageing workforce and
difficulties in recruiting and retaining healthcare workers. Given the demanding nature of the work
in this sector, ensuring an optimal working environment is particularly important in order to ensure
that patients receive high-quality care. The financial and economic crisis affects the healthcare
sector in different ways in different countries. In the view of the social dialogue committee, cuts in
healthcare resources as applied in some Member States are short-sighted measures with detrimental
consequences for public health, the availability of health care staff and infrastructures. To maintain
and further improve the services, the committee urges Members States to maintain their autonomy
and capacity to plan services and organise resources at local, regional and national level, with a
view to securing and building the overall sustainability of healthcare systems. HOSPEEEM and
EPSU commented as well on the Action Plan for the EU Health Workforce and issued a joint
statement on the subject in September 2012. The Action Plan is a component of the so-called
“Employment Package” which focuses on growth and employment in Europe. The social partners
agree with the analysis of quantitative trends presented in the Action Plan and suggested several
ways of improving the situation in the sector, for example, earmarking EU funds (ESF) in order to
retain health workers in countries suffering from outward migration of these workers.
In September 2010, the European Trade Union Committee for Education (ETUCE) organised a
conference on the impact of the economic crisis on the education sector, with contributions from
the European Federation of Education Employers (EFEE) and the European Commission. The
results of two surveys carried out in 2009-2010 and presented at the conference were very diverse,
although the overall trend is worrying, in particular regarding public spending on education and on
teachers' working conditions. The social dialogue committee established in June 2010 adopted its
first joint opinion on education, training and research, entitled Investing in the future, in January
2011. Programmes of fiscal consolidation should, in the opinion of the EU-level social partners in
this sector, give priority to areas of spending that are an investment in the future, thereby supporting
access to learning at all levels. Member States and employers should make the appropriate
investments and organisational arrangements to ensure that all Europeans are provided with
attractive opportunities for lifelong learning. While accepting that education should continue to be a
national competence and that it should therefore not be regulated at European level, the social
partners support the EU initiatives of mutual learning and coordination of policies, as well as EUfunded
education and training programmes. The social partners see it as their responsibility to work
together to influence European initiatives so as to ensure that they are useful and practical.
In April 2012 the social partners in the postal services social dialogue committee signed a new
joint declaration on the evolution of their sector. It sets key principles to better guide the profound
restructuring that is affecting all postal companies in Europe: anticipation of change, recognition
that change management benefits from cooperation between social partners, development of the
employability of workers and encouragement of investment in the postal sector. The declaration
updates an earlier document dating from 2007 and builds upon the conclusions drawn from several
projects co-financed by the EU, within which the European social partners in the postal sector set
up a social observatory.
In the postal sector social partners are also in continuous co-operation and information exchange
with the Commission with regard to postal reform and sector developments. They play an important
role in the Postal Users Forum organised by the Commission once per year in Brussels, where
postal services users, postal operators and trade unions discuss the effects of postal liberalisation in
direct dialogue with the Commissioner and/or high level representatives from the Commission.
273