We call on employers to shoulder their responsibility and sit at the negotiating table everywhere in Europe !
To support the campaign aimed at employers, we have prepared various materials, including a report with data showing the advantages of an involved and well remunerated workforce, as well as testimonials from employers about why they support collective bargaining.
Our report highlights ‘Eight reasons why collective bargaining (and strong unions) are good for employers and society’. Here are some of the highlighted reasons:
- Negotiating at sector level makes bargaining professional and cost-effective: Instead of each individual company and each local union undertaking its own negotiation every one or two years, bargaining can be done by skilled sector-level teams of negotiators.
- Collective bargaining builds social trust between business and workers.
- Sectoral agreements provide a way to set broadly acceptable standards on what can be con¬sidered a fair wage or a fair wage increase, something difficult at company level.
- Sectoral bargaining is very useful in addressing market failure: Market forces tend towards underinvestment in training, as employers have more of an incentive to poach trained workers from other firms rather than to invest in their own workforce.
- Sector-level bargaining prevents the growth of inequality. Unequal economies experience shorter and weaker growth spurts as the forces of aggregate demand that are supposed to be driving the recovery leak away into disproportionate savings by top income households. High inequalities also undermine investment in human capital thus also harming longer growth performance.
Luc Triangle, General Secretary of industriAll Europe comments: “Collective bargaining benefits workers, but it also benefits employers and society. It is high time that all employers acknowledge that collective bargaining benefits their companies as it creates the necessary stability for the economy to flourish. We call on employers to shoulder their responsibility and sit at the negotiating table everywhere in Europe.”
About the campaign
The objective of industriAll Europe’s collective bargaining campaign is to demonstrate the positive impact of collective bargaining, underpinned by strong unions, in delivering a better life for workers. It consists of 7 targeted campaigns, each lasting one month. The ‘Employers’ Campaign’ runs from 18 November – 15 December.
The campaign can also be followed on facebook (@industriAllEU), twitter (@industriAll_EU) and instagram (industriall_europe).
Visit togetheratwork.eu for more information.
See the campaign coverage here. Watch the campaign video.
Contact Patricia Velicu for more information or further comment.