SIPTU's EU-funded partnership project gets underway

Ireland's largest trade union, SIPTU, is heading an EU-funded partnership project, launched in 1998, which is also being supported by the Institute of Personnel and Development and the National Centre for Partnership.

A partnership project involving funding worth IEP 500,000 from the European Union's ADAPT programme is being organised by the Services, Industrial, Professional and Technical Union (SIPTU), Ireland's largest union. Six companies have already agreed to participate in the scheme, which aims to involve 10 firms in total in a partnership "benchmarking" exercise.

Funding was granted in February 1998 and the programme is set to run until the end of 1999. It is quite similar to the PACT programme - also funded by ADAPT - undertaken on a joint basis by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) and the Irish Business and Employers Confederation (IBEC). The aim of the new project is to develop, from practical experience, a set of principles and models of partnership at the level of the enterprise using the 10 companies as pilot projects. The idea is to use the knowledge and experience gained through these cases to help put in place partnership projects in other companies.

The level of partnership is to be measured in each firm at the start, middle and end of the process through a survey in which participants rate current employee/management relations on a "score" of between one to seven in each of 17 different areas. The 17 headings include issues such as: pay and conditions; training; performance appraisal; employee assistance; subcontracting; recruitment; technological change; health and safety; gainsharing; and product development.

Four of the companies which have been evaluated so far average a score of between two to three on the seven-point benchmarking scale. Among the companies which are either already involved or which have confirmed their involvement are Allergan Pharmaceuticals, NEC and Smurfit Corrugated Cases.

A joint union/management team, known as the "partnership enterprise team" (PET), has been set up in each company. These PETs include four or five representatives from both parties, who are also to oversee training in order to assist the partnership process on a company-wide basis.

The project is also being evaluated by an overall project steering committee consisting of two senior SIPTU personnel, an organisational psychologist, the financial controller of the company concerned, a trainer and two externally agreed evaluators. Both the Institute of Personnel and Development (IPD) and the National Centre for Partnership (NCP) (IE9706202N) have agreed to participate in the scheme by assisting in the drafting and development of materials and methodologies.