Conference highlights contribution of sectoral social dialogue to the European employment strategy

A major conference on "New job opportunities in the cleaning services" was held in Brussels on 9-10 October 1997, as a follow-up to the "joint memorandum on new sources of employment" signed by EFCI and Euro-FIET, the European-level social partners in the sector, in October 1996. The cleaning initiative illustrates the potential of the European sectoral social dialogue to contribute to employment creation.

Over 200 representatives of national governments, the European Commission, European and national social partner organisations and the research community attended a conference on "New job opportunities in the cleaning services", held in Brussels on 9-10 October 1997. The conference, which was addressed by Padraig Flynn, the Commissioner responsible for social affairs, was a follow-up to the "joint memorandum on new sources of employment" signed by the European Federation of Cleaning Industries (EFCI) and the European Regional Organisation of the International Federation of Commercial, Clerical, Professional and Technical Employees (Euro-FIET) on 21 October 1996. The meeting aimed to deepen the debate and to launch national round-table discussions between governments and social partners on how to use public assistance to help create new employment opportunities in the cleaning industry.

In light of the forthcoming special Jobs Summit to be held in Luxembourg on 20-21 November 1997, the conference attracted much high-level interest from within the European Commission and national governments, and among European as well as national social partner organisations. It also gained added pertinence in the light of figures presented in the new 1997 Employment in Europe report which show that despite a slight improvement in levels of unemployment, the situation of long-term unemployed and low-skilled individuals remains unchanged. The cleaning industry is a sector which is perceived to offer potential employment and career opportunities to these people.

Background

The cleaning industry is a large and growing sector in the European economy with approximately 45,000 companies engaged in the provision of cleaning services to private and public sector clients (according to 1994 figures from EFCI). The industry officially employs around 2 million individuals, but Euro-FIET estimates that this figures could easily be doubled if problems with the collation of employment statistics in the sector are taken into account. Employment in the industry is highly feminised and largely part-time. Jobs in the cleaning industry have traditionally suffered from low status and a lack of training and career opportunities.

Cleaning is an industry which has been detrimentally affected by European public procurement legislation and compulsory competitive tendering (CCT) based on price rather than quality. Speaking at the conference, Philip Jennings, regional secretary of Euro-FIET, cited examples of cleaning services being offered at a price below the national minimum wage or the collectively agreed minimum. In his criticism of the current form of CCT, he was joined by the president of EFCI, Giancarlo Giandonato, who argued that the practice was effectively destroying jobs. Another threat to private cleaning companies comes from the large underground economy, which is widely seen to deprive legitimate companies of a potential source of income and job-creation potential, and which affords workers no social security and employment protection or career structure.

The social partners at national and European level have long been keen to address the image of the low-skilled, low-status "invisible worker" in the sector. It was partly to achieve this aim that a European social dialogue process in the sector was instituted in 1992. An informal working group met regularly to discuss issues such as working time and vocational training in the sector. This led to the formulation of a joint recommendation on the application of certain provisions of the Directive on the organisation of working time, and joint guidelines on vocational training. In light of the increasing emphasis and efforts in the area of job creation at the European level resulting from the Commission's White Papers on Growth, competitiveness and employment (1993) and on social policy (1994), the December 1994 Essen recommendations and the current "Confidence pact for employment", the decision was taken in February 1995 to set up a working party within the sectoral social dialogue with the aim of exploring new sources of employment in the cleaning industry.

A study was commissioned to look into new employment opportunities in the sector. This report drew its mandate from the joint guidelines on vocational training, adopted by the cleaning social partners on 9 February 1995, which stated that "while training is a factor in job creation, other ways of creating more jobs in the cleaning sector remain to be explored. The social partners in the industrial cleaning sector therefore call on the European Commission to undertake a sectoral assessment of its job creation potential."

The research, which was carried out by ECOTEC Research and Consulting Ltd, aimed to look at ways in which professional cleaning might be extended into new markets, in particular in terms of the provision of cleaning services to private individuals. Using examples of member states which have already instituted demand-subsidy schemes to encourage employment creation in this area, the study aimed to assess the advantages and disadvantages of different schemes and to compare the cost of providing such subsidies with the cost of unemployment. This research fed into the negotiation process between EFCI and Euro-FIET on a joint memorandum on new sources of employment.

The joint memorandum on new sources of employment

After a year of intensive negotiations, the social partners approved a text which was signed in the presence of Padraig Flynn on 21 October 1996. In the memorandum the social partners commit themselves to work together to

• help meet new or unsatisfied cleaning needs of private individuals;

• contribute to the creation of skilled jobs; and

• improve the image of the cleaning profession and of the firms and people providing cleaning services to private individuals.

The memorandum argues that because of the high cost of cleaning services, private individuals currently find themselves unable to purchase such services from private providers. The social partners therefore urge the public authorities to establish the right conditions for the development of these activities through the provision of demand subsidies and other appropriate forms of assistance.

In the memorandum, the social partners stress the importance of creating new, high-quality, skilled jobs and underline their willingness to embark upon a process whereby employees in the sector will be covered by collective agreements. They also highlight the importance of training and the role the public authorities can play in supporting such efforts, particular with regard to the integration of groups with particular difficulties in entering the labour market.

In order to deepen the debate at national and European level and disseminate further the recommendations of the memorandum, it was decided to organise a European-level conference to highlight the potential for employment creation in the sector.

The conference

The significance attached to the conference by the Commission was mirrored in the number of high level officials attending the event. The conference was opened by Karl-Johan Lönnroth (director of employment and labour market policy in DGV of the Commission), Odile Quintin (director of social dialogue, social rights and equality, DGV), Jean Dessailly (president of the EFCI social affairs committee), Philip Jennings (regional secretary of Euro-FIET) and Giancarlo Giandonato (the president of EFCI). All speakers highlighted the timeliness of the Conference in light of the impending Jobs Summit, the current review of the social dialogue process (EU9702102F) and the consultations on the Green Paper on a Partnership for a new organisation of work (EU9707134F). Representatives of Euro-FIET and EFCI expressed their hope that the conference would serve to shed more light on this "misunderstood" sector of the economy. They stressed the potential and importance not only of job creation, but of good-quality job creation and the "professionalisation" of the sector. Support required from public sources should be not only of a financial, but also of a regulatory nature, particularly in tackling the detrimental impact of CCT and VAT regimes which, they argued, currently harmed job creation prospects and working conditions in the sector.

The opening session and press conference was followed by a presentation of the report on New employment opportunities in the European cleaning industry by ECOTEC. The study found that despite a growing demand for cleaning services by private individuals, very few enterprises were currently engaged in supplying such services, primarily as a result of prohibitively high costs compared with the underground economy. Other factors were remaining cultural barriers and an "insufficient structuration of supply". Research found that existing demand-subsidy schemes had met with varied responses - thus highlighting the importance of a prudently designed scheme - but had on the whole succeeded in generating employment. The financial case for the provision of demand subsidies was established through a comparison of the level of subsidy required to make cleaning services financially viable to individuals and the cost of unemployment to the state. In almost all Member States the cost of the latter proved to be higher.

This overview presentation was followed by a more in-depth look at the advantages and disadvantages, successes and failures of existing schemes in different countries ("work cheques" in Germany, chequesand titres emplois servicein France, "HomeService" in Denmark and de SchoonmaakSterin the Netherlands), including views from national ministries, social partners and research organisations. The remainder of the conference was devoted to different aspects of employment creation and the sector, as well as the nature and quality of employment thus created and its regulation through legislation and collective bargaining.

In his address on the second day of the conference, Commissioner Flynn welcomed the realism of the joint memorandum, which he believed translated the Essen recommendations and the "Confidence pact for employment" into reality. He argued that the organisation of the conference in order to follow up the recommendations of the memorandum, and the launch of the national round tables, showed the way for the special Jobs Summit, insofar as it proved the very real possibility of moving from empty declarations to real actions. The Commissioner argued that he was particularly keen to support the initiative of EFCI and Euro-FIET, because the cleaning industry was a "sure bet" for employment creation, given the evidence of an increase in demand resulting from demographic trends (the ageing population), labour market trends (the increasing participation of women in the labour market) and socio-cultural trends (eg a striving for improvements in the quality of life and new aspirations for the use of leisure time). The cleaning industry is also perceived as a sector which can help with the integration of long-term unemployed individuals into the labour market.

The Commissioner supported the social partners' call for public assistance to help generate demand and to support training initiatives, and welcomed the flexibility of the memorandum, which leaves the form such support should take for decision at Member State level. He argued that the contents of the memorandum fitted very neatly with the priorities of the Commission's Proposal for guidelines for Member States' employment policies 1998 published on 1 October 1997. The key elements of these guidelines are:

• support for the creation of a culture of entrepreneurship;

• the achievement of greater employability;

• the achievement of greater adaptability; and

• the strengthening of policies for equal opportunities.

Commissioner Flynn pointed to evidence which highlights that new jobs are primarily being created in small and medium-sized firms, particularly in the services sector - a goal which he argued was at the heart of the joint memorandum. In order to achieve greater employability, the social partners could legitimately look towards national and local authorities and training bodies for support, particularly where this helped to integrate unemployed individuals into the labour market. He argued that in their memorandum, the cleaning social partners had shown their willingness to negotiate at national level on ways to modernise workplace relations - an aim which is supported by the Commission's Green Paper on work organisation. Commissioner Flynn perceived the achievement of equal opportunities to be inextricably linked with the provision of quality cleaning services, because the availability of such services, as with childcare and "eldercare" services, opened greater avenues into the labour market.

Finally, Mr Flynn also pointed to the importance of the joint memorandum and the conference in the light of the second communication on the development of the social dialogue which is due to be published towards the end of 1997, following the formal recognition of the importance of the sectoral and intersectoral social dialogue process in the Maastricht Treaty. He argued that the memorandum showed that industrial relations can be European in scope, while at the same time leaving room for national characteristics.

The final session of the conference was devoted to the launch of national round tables aimed at translating the recommendations of the joint memorandum into reality.

Commentary

The joint memorandum on new sources of employment concluded in the cleaning industry was the first of its kind and, with the organisation of the recent conference, has shown that such European-level joint texts can go beyond pure declarations of intent and fruitfully engage national and European social partner organisations, the European Commission and national governments in the attempt to contribute towards the goal of employment creation. The results of the national round tables will be eagerly awaited, as they will test the transferability of recommendations framed at the European sectoral level into national reality. (Tina Weber, ECOTEC Research & Consulting Ltd)