Civil service unions debate working conditions and European social dialogue

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In January 2000, Portugal's State Technical Staff Union (STE) organised a seminar on the future of public service work in the EU and in the world. The event was an opportunity for European civil servants' trade unions to share their experiences and analyse trends in working conditions in the sector and the first steps toward European social dialogue.

Portugal's State Technical Staff Union (Sindicato dos Quadros Técnicos do Estado, STE) organised a seminar on The civil service in Europe and the world in Lisbon on 29-30 January 2000, in collaboration with the European Federation of Employees in Public Services (EUROFEDOP), the European regional organisation of the International Federation of Employees in Public Services (INFEDOP), an international trade federation affiliated to the World Confederation of Labour (WCL). The event was attended by leading figures from WCL and EUROFEDOP, as well as representatives of mainly INFEDOP-affiliated trade unions from around the world.

Representatives of civil service unions in the European Union at the conference described civil service work as currently taking place in a context of structural adjustments (with an impact on efficiency), quality improvement, and new practices in human resources management and employment contracts.

A particular issue for EU civil service unions is the European-level social dialogue for the national public administration sector, which is currently at an undeveloped stage (EU9911212F). Confronted with the lack of a common European policy in this area, a speaker from the European Institute of Public Administration (EIPA) broached the question of whether there were common issues for the social partners to analyse at the European level, and if there was a European dimension to social dialogue that could be consolidated at the level of the national administrations. In other words, are there issues that merit being dealt with in a dialogue between workers and public authorities? Based on a recent study, the EIPA representative went on to enumerate potential areas of dialogue, such as: problems relating to vocational training and new forms of organising work, like teleworking and part-time work; or developing "synergy" among the social partners, and particularly the unions, with northern and southern Member States sharing their experiences with regard to public services. Debates should be held on internationalisation, Europeanisation, globalisation and cooperation with countries applying for admission to the EU (taking consolidation of democratic institutions into account from the outset in social dialogue).

It was stated that the European social dialogue in the civil service will have to take into consideration certain specific issues relating to:

• questions of representativeness and of how representation is to be accomplished, since the various public administrations in the various countries may or may not be members of the European Centre of Enterprises with Public Participation and of Enterprises of General Economic Interest (CEEP) or the Council of European Municipalities and Regions (CEMR) (EU9803190F). The Portuguese public administration is not represented at all at European level;

• how dialogue can be integrated into the respective national systems of industrial relations;

• whether the dialogue should be intersectoral or at the level of individual sectors of the public services; and

• the lack of European social dialogue structures in this sector.

Despite these concerns, in informal meetings the directors-general of public administration in the EU countries have accepted general guidelines for the social dialogue in the public sector (EU9911212F), which can constitute a good basis for the informal dialogue between the public sector actors.

From a Portuguese perspective, the Minister of Public Administration Reform declared at the Lisbon seminar that he would continue the strategy of fostering trends such as using public-private partnerships for financing and managing public services, and selecting the situations in which the state should act as a direct provider of services. This position has been criticised by STE, which maintains that socially-related services falling into the categories of solidarity and the living conditions of citizens - such as education, health, social security and transport - should remain in the public sphere. The union criticises private institutions for waste of human resources as well as for an increase in precarious employment relationships. STE asserts that unions need to participate in the social dialogue at the European level in order to influence the debate on public service modernisation and human resource management.