The project proposal

In april 2012 the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen (Prof. Dr. Josef Schmid, Professor of Political Economy and Comparative Policy Analysis), in cooperation with the acli e. V. (ACLI — Self-Help Organisation for Intercultural Work), the ACLI Baden-Württemberg, the German Federation of Trade Unions (DGB Baden-Württemberg), the Protestant Academy Bad Boll, the Catholic Workers’ Movement (KAB Rottenburg-Stuttgart) and the Catholic Workers’ Pastoral (Rottenburg-Stuttgart) has submitted to the European Commission (Industrial Relations and Social Dialogue, 04.03.03.01) a project proposal involving European cooperation partners.

The project parnters

For that purpose we had contacted social partners and actors, involved in industrial relations, interested to address the topics future of work, the financial, economic, public finance and welfare state crises and its im-pact on labour and on the future of social systems as well as future-oriented coping strategies of social part-ners. The following partners have accepted our invitation for a project co-operation:

Austria:

• Betriebsseelsorge Oberösterreich (Diözese Linz), Linz

Croatia:

• City of Zagreb, Zagreb

France:

• émergences / CGT Rhône-Alpes, Comité Régional CGT Rhône-Alpes, Montreuil

Germany:

• acli e. V. (ACLI Baden-Württemberg)
• DGB Baden-Württemberg
• DGB Berlin-Brandenburg
• Evangelische Akademie Bad Boll
• KAB Diözesanverband Rottenburg-Stuttgart
• Katholische Betriebsseelsorge (Diözese Rottenburg-Stuttgart)

Italy:

• CISL Lombardia, Milano

Slovakia:

• IZ Research Centre on labour market, Bratislava

Spain:

• CCOO de Catalunya, Barcelona

Sweden:

• LO-distriktet i Västsverige, Swedish Trade Union, Göteborg

United Kingdom:

• ACLI/ENAIP, London

Europe:

•  European Network TANDEM PLUS, Lille

The contract with the European Commission was signed on 20 July 2012.

The contact person

for the project cooperation:

acli e. V.
Mr Norbert Kreuzkamp

Jahnstrasse 30
70597 Stuttgart

phone: +49 7071 793333
fax: +49 7071 793339
mobile: +49 177 4866600

e-mail: info@acli.de,
Internet: www.acli.de

The rationale

Given the persisting financial and economic crisis, Europe is facing enormous employment, social and economic challenges that have a direct impact on labour relations in the Member States: the changes in labour markets and both already realized and still expected welfare adjustments in the form of a dismantling of social welfare systems (retrenchment).

The individual European countries are affected to varying degrees by the financial and economic crisis. Con-sequently since 2007 employment and unemployment figures for individual European countries vary signifi-cantly. The crisis-linked – in some countries are enormous – increase in unemployment throughout Europe affects young workers and migrants in a particular degree.

In many European countries the financial and economic crisis was faced by measures whose aim was to pre-serve the activities of the companies and the jobs of the people, to stimulate demand and increase pub-lic investment. The applied activities to maintain jobs and a crisis-driven expansion of labour market policy in general in European countries have quite different forms, and the perceptions of the impact of the financial and economic crisis vary quite strongly. In part, this difference in performance might be explained by the variations in welfare systems in the affected countries and the different configurations of industrial relations which strongly are influenced by a variety of traditions, institutions and negotiation and governance procedures as well as of involvement of public institutions. The financial and economic crisis has shown that the industrial relations in the European countries in all their diversity at all levels (companies, sectors, across industries and national) have a strong impact on the crisis management. The German example shows that neo-corporatist arrangements to secure employment (e.g. short-time compensation, employment insurance confirmation rate agreements) may provide for significant contribution to overcoming the financial and eco-nomic crisis, to stabilise employment and even to create new jobs.

A central objective of the Europe 2020 strategy, which aims at an intelligent, sustainable and inclusive growth, is the attainment of an employment rate of 75 per cent for the age group of 20 – to 64-year-olds. The conclusions of the Cohesion Report give evidence that this aim cannot be reached only by centralised actions. Rather, it requires a strong participation – on national and regional level – in particular of the social partners.

The activities

Against this background, the project LET intends to enhance knowledge of labour relations in Europe by a regional analysis of labour relations for selected regions, some successful regions included. The LET project proposes to track down innovative approaches in view in the labour relations to handle the critical developments of the financial and economic crisis, to increase sensitivity to specific employment issues, to promote the exchanges in this area among the partners, to develop action-relevant knowledge about the labour relations at regional level and finally to make available the results of work to a general public. A significant contribution to the implementation and achievement of the objectives of the EU 2020 strategy should be made by showing opportunities of employment policies and giving evidence of innovative regional approaches of the social dialogue in selected European regions.

The implementation of the LET projects is envisaged for the period October 2012 to December 2013.

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