European sector social dialogue – facts and figures
Peter Kerckhofs, Eurofound
Based on information from representativeness studies there is comparable information available for 40 of the 43 European Sector Social Dialogue Committees (ESSDCs). This comparative data will be presented in tables, figures and graphs.
In a first section the history of European sector social dialogue is presented. Milestones in this are the European Commission Decision of May 1998 and the European Commission staff working document of 2010. The proportion of the EU workforce presented in different ESSDCs, will be indicated here, just like the numbers of employees in activities not yet covered by ESSDCs.
The second part of the paper & presentation, will be the data from national trade unions and employers organisations in the different sectors. The degree of fragmentation and the sector relatedness will be presented and compared. For trade unions there is more fragmentation at national level. On average there are about 3 trade unions per country in a sector, while for the employers this is 2. At European level however there are 65 European employers organisations and a much less fragmented European Trade union landscape with 6 main European Sectoral Trade Union Organisations.
A third section will assess and compare the representativeness of European Social Partner organisations, in terms of the proportion of affiliated organisations and in terms of the proportion of EU member states where there is an affiliated member organisation.
