Industrial Relations in Europe 2012 - European Commission - Europa

joint opinion on the consultation regarding the potential impact of new Commission proposals on
ground-handling services. Although the airlines could not subscribe to the end result, the
achievement of this Statement on the revision of the ground handling directive of 7 April 2011 was
considered to be an important step forward in the social dialogue in this sector. The signatory
parties called for improvements to the current tender system and for a social clause on transfer of
staff in case of partial or total loss of activity. The Commission proposal, published on 1 December
2011, is now being discussed by Council and Parliament.
In November 2011, the European social partners from the air traffic management (ATM) working
group jointly organised a conference on The role of the European Social Dialogue in the
implementation of the Single European Sky, during which they signed a declaration in which they
outlined their future work. In their joint conference statement, the ATM social partners set out a
number of aims to address the social challenges that the industry is facing: to maintain and enhance
safety across Europe; to ensure a sustainable European aviation industry through the
implementation of the Single European Sky, and to make it a success story; to improve industrial
relations through the continued improvement of social dialogue based around agreed principles; and
to contribute to deliver an efficient ATM industry.
The European social partners in the rail sector (the Community of European Railways and
Infrastructure Companies (CER), the European Rail Infrastructure Managers (EIM) and ETF) have
been working on the challenges of demographic change in the context of the project Employability
in the face of demographic change - prospects for the European rail sector. The result is a guide
with more than 30 examples of good practices, addressing the issue of demographic change and
employability in European railway companies. These actions focus on the areas of recruitment and
retention, education and training, further education and qualifications, health promotion, and
appropriate working conditions for the various life phases. In addition, the guide includes the
outcomes and evaluation of a survey that was carried out during the course of the project. A total of
35 European railway companies and trade unions participated in this survey. Given the advanced
average age of the workforce in many of the companies surveyed (34% of the workers are older
than 50) and the difficulties for certain occupational groups, almost 80% of these companies expect
that demographic change will impact on recruitment in their companies. At the same time, however,
age-specific actions have not yet spread very widely among railway companies.
Similar to many other economic sectors of activity, the European insurance sector is exposed to a
process of far-reaching change, which to a large extent is driven by demographic developments.
The creation of socio-economic conditions that will allow both employees and employers to keep
pace with this changing environment represents a huge challenge for Member States, the EU
institutions and the social partners. The social partners in the insurance sector decided on a very
wide approach to the demographic challenge, including not only age-related human resources
policies but also work-life balance in wider sense, qualifications, lifelong learning, health and
safety. A project entitled Addressing the Demographic Challenge in the European Insurance
Sector: A Collection and Dissemination of Good Practices is the first project dealing with the
demographic challenge in the insurance sector from a pan-European perspective. It aims to raise
the attractiveness of the sector by sharing and disseminating good practices and therefore includes
the publication of a booklet of good practices, a conference in June 2012 and a seminar in
September 2012. It is a major step forward in the follow-up to the Insurance sectoral social dialogue
committee joint statement of January 2010. The good practices collected for inclusion in the booklet
will be selected on the basis of their originality and innovative character. The project is also directly
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