Industrial Relations in Europe 2012 - European Commission - Europa

EU's flagship policy towards the sector under the title LeaderSHIP 2020. To raise the profile of the
industry and its attractiveness among employees and job-seekers, CESA held an event on the
occasion of the European Maritime Day in Gothenburg on 22 May 2012.
In the construction sector, on the basis of their work programme, the social partners are working on
the following themes: attractiveness of the sector to young workers; competiveness; and a climate
friendly construction industry. The social partners adopted a range of documents concerning
employment in the sector, such as a joint opinion on self-employed and bogus self-employed people
in February 201; a joint position paper on the Directive on conditions of entry and residence of
third-country nationals in the framework of an intra-corporate transfers in February 2011 and
January 2012; and a joint proposal for improving the application and the enforcement of the posting
or workers Directive (96/71/EC) in July 2011 and December 2012.
The sectoral social dialogue committee for sea fisheries expressed its opinion concerning the
problems currently facing the fishing industry in Europe. The social partners were of the view that
they were not properly consulted in the preparation of impact studies on changes in the Common
Fisheries Policy, despite the risk that they see of the suggested modifications leading to a reduction
in the number of jobs, vessels and fishing quotas. Furthermore, they argue that significant reduction
in quotas for some species of fish was decided without assessing their impact. Finally, the social
partners noted that regulation aimed at curbing illegal fishing is very complicated and causes
problems for fishers. They requested that the Commission and Member States simplify these rules
to make them more comprehensive.
Skills and Training
Many sectoral social dialogue committees continued their work on training and skills development.
On 6 December 2011, the European sectoral social partners in the textile, clothing and leather
(TCL) sectors agreed to establish a European Council for Education and Employment in Textile
Clothing Leather. The objective of this "EU TCL Skills Council" is to foster the enhancement of the
networking of the various European Textile Clothing and Leather Observatories and education and
labour market stakeholders and to promote synergies for a better, more sustainable and more
competitive European TCL industry. By bringing together corporate executives, owner-operators of
smaller firms, employees, union leaders, educators and government representatives in a network
that will inform the policy recommendations of the TCL European social partners, the skills council
will be addressing a wide range of issues related to technological change, qualification standards,
labour development planning, and human resource development. The EU TCL Skills Council is the
first skills council to be set up by European sectoral social partners.
In the road transport sector, the International Road Transport Union (IRU) and ETF, together with
partners, have undertaken a joint social partner project on training in the commercial road transport
sector, covering mobile and non-mobile employees of road transport companies (the "STARTS"
project – Skills, Training and the Road Transport sector). The social partners recognise the
indispensability of high-quality training for developing an efficient, properly skilled, safe and
sustainable workforce in commercial road transport. In recent years the sector's workforce has had
to expand rapidly and improve its range of skills to respond to numerous changes to the working
environment and increasingly complex legal, operational, and product-related requirements. They
believe that it is in the mutual interest of both employers and workers to identify what is needed to
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