New social dialogue committee for food and drink industry

On 23 January 2012, the European Federation of Food, Agriculture and Tourism Trade Unions and the employer organisation FoodDrinkEurope signed a joint agreement to launch social dialogue in the European food and drink industry, under the auspices of the European Commission. The sector was the last of Europe’s large manufacturing sectors to form a social dialogue committee and its first task is to address ways of making the sector more attractive to younger workers.

Background

The establishment of this new European social dialogue committee followed the adoption in 2009 of a recommendation by the High Level Group on the Competitiveness of the Agro-Food Industry (57.5Kb PDF), a multi-stakeholder forum that brings together EU institutions and business and civil society stakeholders in the EU food supply chain.

Recommendations from the High Level Group have changed the position of the main companies in this sector, which have not participated in European social dialogue since it began 20 years ago.

A tool of good governance

The High Level Group members recommended that the industry look to European sectoral social dialogue as ‘a tool of good governance’ and invited the European Commission to ‘examine the representativeness of the European social partners with a view to assessing the feasibility of creating a social dialogue committee’.

Figures from FoodDrinkEurope on the food and drink industry (1.3Mb PDF) show that the food and drink sector has 4.2 million workers in the European Union. It was the last of the largest industrial manufacturing sectors to have a European social dialogue committee, after the metal industry launched its own committee in 2010.

Following the conclusion of the agreement between the European Federation of Food, Agriculture and Tourism Trade Unions (EFFAT) and FoodDrinkEurope on the launch of EU social dialogue in this sector, the European Commission is carrying out a representativeness study of both organisations.

EFFAT and FoodDrinkEurope have adopted a work programme for 2012 which sets out the basis of their cooperation. In a press release announcing the launch of the social dialogue committee, its new Chair Michael Andritzky commented that the social partners will work on ‘ways to enhance skills and employability in the sector with a view to improving access for young workers to industry jobs and by addressing the challenge of managing an increasingly ageing workforce’.

Making sector more attractive

In their work programme, the social partners cite recommendation 17 of the High Level Group, referring to the need to increase the attractiveness of the industry. In order to do this, they have decided to launch a study, funded by the European Commission, to analyse the age structure of the workforce in the EU food and drink industry as well as the skills, job profiles and vocational training that will be needed over the next 10 to 15 years.

Following this, they will issue recommendations on how to communicate these needs to the European Commission and the vocational training and education systems in Member States.

Based on the results of this study and the validation of its conclusions by social partners, joint activities will be developed to address two key issues.

• Employability – discussions will cover how to communicate the results of the study, the action needed to boost the attractiveness of the EU food and drink industry to potential employees, and the improvement of cooperation with universities and vocational training centres in Member States. The aim is to better match the demand for human resources in the industry to benefit EU citizens.

• Managing an ageing workforce – the aim is to share examples of good practice on ways in which this issue is being addressed by the food and drink industry in different Member States.

Policy developments

EFFAT and FoodDrinkEurope will explore the possibility of developing common views on important EU policy developments that affect the EU food and drink sector. This could be done by sharing each organisation’s views on these issues and holding exploratory discussions with the aim of finding points of common interest and developing common positions and guidelines. They have identified some issues that could be tackled. One is the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (460Kb PDF), of particular relevance to the food and drink industry since it processes 70% of the EU’s agricultural produce.

In its 2012 programme of Topics for joint programmes and activities (86Kb PDF), the committee also raises the issue of national policies adopted by some Member States to improve the health of citizens. The new committee wants to ‘jointly explore the effects of taxation on food and drink products in terms of competitiveness of the European industry and its consequences on employment’.

Some Member States are discussing or have already introduced laws to impose or increase taxes that target a specific range of products based on their nutritional content, claiming that this will discourage the consumption of certain products and have a positive impact on obesity rates. Several EU Member States have voted to tax specific nutrients such as sugar or saturated fat, or specific food categories such as ice cream, confectionery, chocolate and soft drinks.

Frédéric Turlan, HERA