Project summary
To support capacity building for collective bargaining in the services sector, BARSERVICE seeks to provide a complex analysis of industrial relations in the services sector 9 countries (6 EU Member States and 3 Candidate Countries). Knowing the current situation, its challenges and opportunities is the prerequisite for improvements in bargaining processes and coverage. The project will map the structure of collective agreements (which companies have them and what is their content), involvement of unions and employers' organizations, opinions and views of the social partners regarding (sectoral) collective bargaining, organizing rates and obstacles to organizing, the power position of trade unions and strategies to combat undeclared work in the service sector. The project will focus specifically on several areas of services: commerce, finance, social care and publishing.
Full Project title
BARSERVICE: Smart bargaining in the services sector: overview, challenges, opportunities
Funded by
European Commission - SOCPL-2022-IND-REL-01, Project numer: 101126532
Duration
2023 - 2025
Countries Covered
BARSERVICE brings novel empirical evidence on the state of the art in industrial relations in the service sector in mostly understudied Member States (Croatia, Slovakia, Czechia, Romania, Italy and France) and Candidate Countries (North Macedonia, Serbia and Turkey).
Goal of the project
In response to this, the BARSERVICE project aims to provide an in-depth analysis of industrial relations in the service sector from different perspectives to disentangle the challenges and opportunities and in order to provide useful policy recommendations and tools for social and policy actors related to the structural transformation of European countries and increasing shift from manufacturing towards the service sector, the deterioration of the working conditions particularly pronounced in tertiary jobs, both in terms of low wages, unstable jobs and gender segregation and the lack of adequate space and margin of intervention for collective bargaining and industrial relations. An important aspect also relates to uncovering the likelihood and incidence of undeclared work and strategies to mitigate it and support declared work via decent working conditions and collective bargaining.
Specific objectives of the BARSERVICE project include:
- Understand the key trends and the context of the deregulation of the labour market and impact on working conditions, wages and type of jobs, gender and immigrant segregation, diffusion of undeclared, informal jobs or fictitious self-employment, digitalisation and scarce coverage of collective bargaining and low rate of unionisation in the service sector across 9 countries.
- Understand the key challenges deriving from the deregulation of the labour market, gender and immigrant segregation, diffusion of undeclared, informal jobs or fictitious self-employment, and scarce coverage of collective bargaining and low rate of unionisation in the service sector and how action is foreseen in particular EU Member States and Candidate countries in response to the EU-level social dialogue priorities.
- Analyse how the key challenges related to the deregulation of the labour market explain reasons for scarce coverage of collective bargaining and low rate of unionisation in the service sector across 6 EU Member States and 3 Candidate Countries.
- Compile and analyse a coded, electronic database of 72 collective agreements in the services sector, specifically for social care, publishing, finance and commerce, and analyse what stipulations they include regarding work and family arrangements (including pregnancy,
maternity/paternity leave and childcare), individual employment contracts and job security, health or medical assistance for employees, equality and/or violence at the workplace, standard working hours, schedules, holidays and/or days of leave, sickness and disability, social security and pensions, training/apprenticeship, wages, workers’ direct participation, green clauses, work intensification, changes after covid-19, digitalisation, and other workplace changes. - Through facilitating direct exchange between social partners in the service sector from 6 EU Member States and 3 Candidate Countries and the EU-level sectoral social partners, identify opportunities for strengthening collective bargaining in response to the challenges faced by the services sector.
Parties involved
Coordinator
- Central European Labour Studies Institute (CELSI) | Bratislava, Slovakia
Partners
- WageIndicator Foundation | Amsterdam, Netherlands
- UNI Europa | Brussels, Belgium
- Dokuz Eylül Üniversitesi | İzmir, Turkey
- Academia de Studii Economice (ASE) din Bucuresti | Bucharest, Romania
- Institut za razvoj i međunarodne odnose (IRMO) | Zagreb, Croatia
- Macedonia2025 | Skopje, North-Macedonia
- Ekonomski fakultet, Univerzitet u Beogradu | Belgrade, Serbia
Associate partners
- Confederația Patronală Concordia | Bucharest, Romania
- Konfederácia odborových zväzov Slovenskej republiky | Bratislava, Slovakia
- Federazione Informazioni, Spettacolo e Telecomunicazioni | Rome, Italy
- Sindikata trgovine Hrvatske | Zagreb, Croatia
- Institute Syndical Europeen (ETUI) | Brussels, Belgium
- Odborový zväz bánk a poisťovní | Bratislava, Slovakia
- Organizacija Na Rabotodavaci Na Makedonija | Skopje, Macedonia
- AWVN | The Hague, Netherlands
Publications
Coming soon
We thankfully acknowledge funding provided by the European Commission, DG Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion, Project No. 101126532
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