News

UNI europa's Property Services affiliates from all over Europe representing cleaning and private security sector workers gathered together last week in UNI Global Union's head office in Nyon, Switzerland. The General Assembly which took place over a day and half and was followed by the UNI Global Union's Property Services Global meeting. The Assembly addressed three key themes for the sector: Socially responsible public procurement and working conditions, Health and Safety at Work: Preventing harm to workers, professional illnesses, stress at work, third party violence and Equal opportunities. Speakers included:

• Dave Godson from the the UK trade union UNISON presented the Cleaner's Hospitals campaign which resulted in the Cleaner's conference in 2009 and the UNISON guide to campaigning and negotiating around procurement.
• Tim Treguenza from the European Health and Safety Agency who presented the agency's work on preventing harm to cleaning workers and the Good Maintenance campaign they are launching this year.
• Bob Crosby from the UK trade union GMB who detailed the recently launched Safeguard Campaign to address third party violence against British private security guards.
• Bernadette Ségol UNI europa's regional secretary who detailed the UNI europa Strategic priorities for 2010-2011 and the Toulouse Congress in 2011.
• Rachel Owens, UNI europa's Property Services Policy Officer who gave a report on the sectoral activities, an update on European developments and introduced the sector's European Strategic Priorities for 2010-2011.
• Alice Dale, UNI Global Union's Property Services Head who provided information on the Responsibly Contractor Policy.
• Veronica Fernadez, UNI Global Union's Equal Opportunites Head who presented UNI's objectives in terms of 40% representation and UNI's highly creative video on violence at work.

Please find all of the power points and documents in the section for affiliates.

To see Veronica's power point from UNI Equal Opportunities please go to www.breakingthecircle.org.

For more information on the work of the OSHA Health and Safety organisation please go to:

http://osha.europa.eu/en/topics/cleaning_workers and http://osha.europa.eu/en/campaigns.



In addition to the interesting interventions participants broke off in to three working group sessions and reported back with their conclusions.



Public procurement is seen as a priority topic however unions are facing opposition from employers who say during the recession it is impossible to suggest this approach to clients. Many unions are launching campaigns to raise awareness of this issue (Ireland, Netherlands, UK..) which are having some success however, the primary objective is still to obtain guarantee from both clients and employers to implement socially responsible public procurement policies. Participants concluded that better inter-union collaboration on a local, national and European level and a broad and stronger regulatory environment should be key objectives. On a practical level, companies who breach contracts or submit excessively low bids should be removed from the tendering process, much stricter controls on breaches of contracts and better legislation to ensure companies moving cross border are obliged to abide by local laws. Suggestions were also made to use EWCs as a platform to raise this issue and to introduce social levies on companies not respecting labour and social laws.



On the issue of health and safety , professional illnesses and third party violence working groups concluded the need to convince employers about the cost benefits of investments in health and safety and implementing effective policies to tackle professional illnesses and third party violence. Inclusion of all relevant stakeholders and high public visibility to the issues was also viewed as key to successful campaigns. Harassment was also raised as an important issue to be tackled given the high majority of women and ethnic minority workers in the property services sector. Better implementation of existing health and safety legislation and monitoring by trade unions were identified as key objectives. On a practical level, trade unions should be given an active role in the negotiations and committee for health and safety, there should be better recognition for all professional illnesses affecting property services sector and clients should not be allowed to apply double standards by treating their contracted workers as inferior to their own workers.



Discussions surrounding equal opportunities focused on issues facing women workers such as lack of child care, unsocial hours, low wages and in particular the low status image associated with this sector. This inferior image was seen as the cause of lack of youth joining the sector, lack of training and recognition in terms of higher wages. Men were often in the higher status jobs and women in the private security sector often faced harassment due to the male dominated nature of the sector. Pregnant workers throughout the sector suffered from lack of social protection and undocumented workers and migrant workers often were at a disadvantage due to a lack of knowledge about local labour laws and rules as well as a low level of literacy and language skills. Participants concluded that the sector's image needed to renovated and regarded as a skilled profession, education and career development needed to be compulsory and to a higher standard, trade unions need to play a role in protecting undocumented and migrant workers by providing them with information and representation, more campaigns needed to be launched to address the issue of violence and the effects of professional illnesses and better monitoring and follow up to support workers. On a practical level clearer and effective policies on equal opportunities especially with regards to pay and access to education were advocated , organising workers was seen as key to improve their influence and working with the clients to gain better recognition for the value of both the services and of the workers providing it.



Finally, the European Property Services Strategic Priorities were presented including (amongst others) strengthening the sectors EWCs, working for jobs for justice, improving the European social dialogue and ensuring a greater emphasis on social considerations in the Cross Border Cash in Transit legislation. These priorities were unanimously adopted and will lay the groundwork for the sector's work program 2010 - 2011.



The UNI europa Property Services would like to thank all of the participants and speakers and congratulate them for a very successful 2010 General Assembly.