News

Today UNI Europa Commerce and Eurocommerce publish a call for tenders aimed at extending and supporting capacity building among national social partners of the commerce sector in new Member States (EU 12) and in candidate countries with the following objectives:

· Encourage, improve and strengthen the role, skills and capacity of social partners organisations in the new Member States and candidate countries;

· Provide training to workers and employers representatives on selected topics (collective bargaining, sectoral social dialogue, employment policies etc.);

· Provide information, good practices and exchange of experiences of the structures and the functioning of social partner organization in the various concerned countries;

· Organise a structured exchange of information and experience among national social partners on industrial relations and collective bargaining;

· Sharing information on labour and social structures in the commerce sector in the EU;

· Developing and strengthening partnerships and mutual trust between social partners organisations involved in the European Social dialogue and/or in other EU activities (e.g. projects, conferences, seminars, etc.) and those who started to participate recently or have not yet been involved;

· Building on the acquired knowledge and responding to the needs of particular geographical areas.



Social partners in the Commerce sector often lack the financial and human resources capacity to engage in a true social dialogue at sectoral level. Businesses in the commerce sector are not always organised in employers’ associations (or are not part of them) and/or are not committed to social dialogue at both national and European levels. The European Social partners in the commerce sector will achieve the enumerated objectives through the implementation of the following activities:

· Organising separate preparatory activities for each side in regional working groups

· Organising 4 joint workshops on a regional basis on the most relevant topics at both national and European level

· Organise a final seminar on industrial relations, social dialogue and EU social policies in Brussels



About the project

The present tender aims at finding an expert (referred to below as “the subcontractor”) to actively participate and support the project “Promoting capacity building and improving social dialogue in the commerce sector for the organisations in new Member States and candidate countries.



The period of work will run from the beginning of 2013 (after selection) until the end of 2013 (end of the project). The selected experts will report to the project Steering Committee and to the European Social Partners for commerce. The budget available for the subcontractor is of EUR 48.500. The Call for Tenders can be found in the related documents tab.



The bid should be sent by 31.01.2013 at the latest at the following address:



Ilaria Savoini

85, avenue des Nerviens

B – 1040 Brussels

savoini@eurocommerce.be



with a copy to : laila.castaldo@uniglobalunion.org