Social, Economic and Trade Union Background:

1. Promotion of Social Dialogue, Strengthening of Workers’ Organisations and Collective Representation via Education, Information and Consultation with a Special Focus on Nordic Companies in the Baltic StatesEVALUATION REPORTHubert CambierAoût- Septembre 2008

2. Social, Economic and Trade Union Background: • Estonia: “High Income country”; Latvia, Lithuania: “Upper-Middle-Income Countries” • But: Social standards: among the lowest of Europe! • Major factor: EU integration.

3. Project Background: • The present project was the follow up of two previous projects implemented in 2004 and 2005-6. • “Coordination of Workers Education and Consultation about the EU Labour Market regulations and Organising, with a special focus on Nordic Companies in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania”. The two projects were supported by the EU Commission – DG Empl/D/1, contracts n° VS/2003/0453 and VS/2005/0222). • The departure point of these two projects was the importance of the Nordic investments and direct enterprise implementation in the reconstruction of the Baltic economies, and the role they could have, by encouraging or on the contrary discouraging social dialogue, in the shaping of the industrial relations in the countries.

4. Project 2007-2008. Presentation (1) • Expected Results: • Strengthening of the social dialogue in the targeted sectors; • Improvement of the trade union skills in organising, recruiting and negotiating CA; • Setting up of an informational network; • Increase of the membership; establishment of a CA or improvement of the existing one; • Cross-border coordination between the Nordic-Baltic trade union organisations; • More active participation of the women and the young workers in the unions of the targeted companies and sectors.

5. Project 2007-2008. Presentation (2) • Indicators of achievements: • Increase of the trade union membership; • Consolidation of the union structures in the targeted sectors and companies; • Extension of the CAcoverage, and improvement of their quality; • Regular exchange of information between unions of the same sectors or companies; • Further development of the website; • Higher participation of women and youth in Trade Union activities. • Project strategy: • In line with what has been done in the two previous projects, the partners decided to concentrate their efforts on a few sectors from the private industry and services and to target in these sectors key companies. At the beginning of the project, priority sectors and biggest companies were identified.

6. Evaluation of the Project implementation and achievementsSocial dialogue: • In the three countries, structures of social dialogue have been established. • In Lithuania, a constructive attitude has been adopted by the governments, and the social partners are encouraged to play their role. Support is provided to them. • In Estonia and Latvia: the Governments are reluctant to practice real social dialogue, and accept to meet the social partners when forced to do it. • Sectorial dialogue: poor in the three countries. • Positive role of the EU institutions – implementing programmes that involve the social partners and promoting EU social values. • Recommendation: building a sectorial dialogue could be one of the priorities. A joint project, with the participation of Employers’ association, could provide a good opportunity, to promote “clarification exchanges” between the two social partners about the function of sectorial dialogue, and to agree on some standard “framework agreements”.

7. Project strategy: a place for the GUFs and the ETSs? • Sectors and enterprises included in the National Plans of Action • No structural cooperation with the GUFs or ETSs. • Recommendation 1: Strqtegy of the project: it would be advisable, for any project targeting sectors and big companies, to establish a formal partnership with the ETSs and the GUFs. The ETUC could probably help in this, at least as far as ETSs are concerned. • Recommendation 2: Selection of the companies: closer consultation and coordination between the national partners should contribute to place at the top of the priorities the companies that have branches or enterprises in two or three countries; coordination mechanisms and meetings, at the levels of the unions of these companies, should enable them to implement coordinate actions. Specific support of the ETSs/ GUFs and of the Nordic professional unions could contribute to strengthen this cooperation.

8. Organising and recruiting, consolidation of the TU membership • Trade union density is estimated to be around • 9-10 % in Estonia, • 15 % in Latvia and • 10-11 % in Lithuania) and that the situation is particularly acute in the private sectors. • Results: • the project has not reversed the general trend of membership’ decline that characterises the trade union movement in these three countries. • interesting breakthroughs in different sectors. In particular, in the Commerce and Retail sector (see, for example, Rimi, IKI or Statoil), in the Hotels and Restaurants (Hotels Reval, Olympic Casino), in the Security Services (G4F), in the Metal sector (Keta-PKC, Elcotec), the Chemical industry (Yara), the Food industry (Svyturys-Utenos alus brewery) and in Construction (YIT). The trade unions also consolidated their presence in the transport sector (AirBaltic), and in some Banks (SEB Bank). • Targeted companies are SMEs – or decentralised companies with several branches, shops or banks, which themselves are relatively small social entities.

9. Establishment of a union; negotiation of CA (1)At the company level: • Long term process. In many companies, the social dialogue, when it exists, builds on an industrial relationship that has already been set up in 2007, 2006 or on 2005. However, quite a few CA have been signed in 2008 (Fortum termets, PKC, Rimi Latvia, Fazer Amoca, Lauma united trade organisation, Valmieras Stiklasdriedra trade organisation, Sauva textile, Hanzas Maisnica, Olympic casino, AS Durapart, Svyturys-Utenos alus) or are in the Collective Bargaining process (Reval Hotel, KG Knutson, IKI, Humana, JSC LCP). • In the companies where a significant number of the employees (more than 10 %) have decided to join the union, the union has been established, recognised by the management, and in most of the cases, a CA has been signed. There is still quite a number of companies where the number of workers ready to join the union is rather small, which means that the union has still to fight for its recognition. • Anti-union attitude of the managers to the unions still exist. • Improvement of the quality content of the collective agreements? • Recommendation: the building up of a data bank of the CA negotiated at the company and sectorial level, the analysis of the contents of the CA and of the way they are implemented could contribute to identify the key successes obtained and the key problems faced by the unions. Should this be included in a future project, it could help the trade unionists to learn from the practice of their fellow-colleagues, from other companies, sectors and countries. It could also facilitate the definition of key priorities in terms of topics to be included in the CB to promote the policy of the organisations.

10. Establishment of a union; negotiation of CA (2)At the sectorial level: • The establishment of CA at the sectorial level is rather limited. There are a few of them in the transport services, the Forestry or the energy sectors, but this happens because either the agreement covers in fact a company established at the national level, a public company or administration. There are also a few “framework” agreements – such as the ones negotiated with the Latvia Merchant Association, the Latvian Employers’ Association of Commerce, or between the Federation of the Estonian Metal Workers Union and its Employers counterparts. • Recommendation: Social dialogue at the sectorial level could be a priority for a future project. Ideally, both employers’ associations and trade unions would be involved, or at least find opportunities to exchange together about their different conceptions of social dialogue. The unions, on their side, should formulate their strategy, that could, for example, build on the following elements: (1) establish partnership and negotiate CA systematically with all the companies that have different branches active in one, or more than one, country; (2) promote framework agreements on “principle issues” (ways to organise social dialogue, workers rights, training for the workers, contract standards….) instead of “material claims”, (3) build on positive achievements and create an atmosphere of trust that could facilitate further progresses, and convince employers of other sectors of the interest of such a dialogue.

11. Strengthening of the union structures The partner organisations are here confronted with several difficulties: • Rather limited implementation of the trade union movement, at least in some sectors of activities. • Some organisations are structured more as “association of company unions” than as a confederation, uniting professional unions implemented at the national level. • In the other organisations, there are multiple professional structures, that tend to be rather poorly connected to the reality of today. • Good practice: the process of cooperation that has been engaged, in EAKL, between five industry unions that took part in the project: the Textile / Light Industry Union, the Metal Workers, the Food and Forestry Workers, the Energy Workers and the Miners. All together, these five unions represent around 10,000 trade union members. Separately, none of these unions is able to engage a lawyer, to produce information material, to organise seminars, etc, etc. But together they can. • Recommendation: professional unions active in the same sectors should be encouraged to establish structural cooperation, to organise pool of common resources and to define coordinated plans of action in order to maximise their action. Projects should be used as instruments to promote such cooperation, including by establishing criteria and providing incentives that would encourage the unions to work in this direction.

12. Trans-Baltic and Baltic-Nordic cooperation • Trans-Baltic cooperation. Only the transport federations of Lithuania and Latvia set up an effective mechanism of cooperation, to coordinate, with the support of the Nordic Transport federations, their action in the aviation sector (SAS / AirBaltic). • Recommendation: Building mechanisms could be a priority for future projects. In this perspective, we would recommend that any project that would work on this issue would set up specificactivities (meetings, workshops, mechanisms of bilateral and trilateral coordination), whose objectives would be to define joint strategies to promote trade unionism or social dialogue in clearly identified companies or sectors, implemented in two or three countries. • Baltic-Nordic cooperation. The project has contributed to the strengthening of the relationship between the Baltic unions and their Nordic – in particular Swedish – counterparts. In some cases, it helped the unions to establish contacts and to start cooperation. • Recommendation: in the future, projects foresee not only general conferences where Nordic and Baltic partners could meet and exchange together, but also sectorial activities or events, organised at the Trans-Baltic – Nordic level, where concrete issues, related to identified companies, could be discussed and joint partnerships could be established, or just strengthened.

13. European Workers’Councils • The EWCs were not included among the objectives of the present project. • There is however quite a lot of work to do (1) to make sure that Baltic union and workers’ representatives take their place in the existing EWCs, and are not bypassed for example by pseudo-representatives, nominated directly or indirectly by the management of the companies, (2) to enable them to fully participate in the debates of the EWCs, working in team with their colleagues from the other countries; (3) to establish a better link between the work at the European level (information and consultation) and the union responsibilities at the national level (negotiation). • Recommendation: the role of the EWCs should not be underestimated. However, there are still companies where the representation of the workers, in the Baltic countries, raises difficulties, in term of designation or participation. There should also be more visibility of the role and the activity of the workers’ representatives in these councils. This could be the topic of a further partnership, between Nordic and Baltic unions and between them and the ETSs.

14. Management of the project • The project was conceived in a largely decentralised way. The same was true at the level of the national partners. In the framework of the objectives and priorities defined by the project, the national organisations decided the sectors, the companies and the professional unions that would be involved in the project. the way to implement them. • Relation between professional, regional unions and confederations: internal debate inside the organisations – or in the framework of a project – should contribute to a clarification of the tasks, and the kind of support that the local and professional unions could receive from the regional and confederation structures. The confederations should in particular take the responsibility of everything that is related to the global environment (image of the unions, global campaigns…) and should also set up a pro-active coordination to support the actions undertaken by the local and professional unions. In this framework, the building up of small teams – composed of a few experienced organisers, activists, and perhaps trainers, including people that have gained this experience in their professional unions – could provide a useful support, facilitate the exchanges of experience and strengthen the capacity of all the organisations. Future projects could include building up this kind of teams, and their further training, among its objectives.

15. Methodology of the project • The organisations used different methods to recruit new members and organise them. The main ones are the followings: • Media campaigns, advertisements through radio or other media, at the national or regional level. This was organised quite successfully in Lithuania, and, jointly with the establishment of phone lines, encouraged the workers, particularly in companies confronted with problems, to contact the trade unions; this kind of approach is necessarily general; • Production of leaflets, brochures – that could be distributed in specific (to the workers of a company) or non specific situations; • Identifying some key individuals that could facilitate the contacts with the workers of a company that could be interested in setting up a union; these individuals could be (1) persons that contact the trade unions on their own initiative or because they reacted to the media campaign, (2) workers who were already trade unionists, in a previous company fore example; (3) people met through informal channels and who are potential leaders of opinion; • Organising meeting or seminars to inform workers of their rights and of the role of a union – what it can do, the support that it could provide to the workers, what is a CA, etc..); also, this kind of seminars or meetings could be organised in specific or non specific situations; • Establish a union; register it if the required number of workers to set up a union is reached; • Inform the management of the company, propose the establishment of social dialogue and the negotiation of a CA. • This is the core of the approach and, if indeed the contacts with the managers are important, it is mainly to make sure that they would not oppose this approach, that they will accept the free decision of the workers. In short, it is to avoid obstacles and harassment more than for anything else.

16. Women • The situation of the Baltic countries organisations, compared with the other organisations from CEEC and even from most of the Western Europe countries organisations, is quite advanced. The women represent 45 % of the total membership in Solidarumas up to 60 % in LBAS, and, if some progress could still be achieved, their representation in the decision making bodies and in the leaderships of the professional unions as well as in the confederations, are still among the best ones of the whole region. • Against this background, the necessity to organise specific seminars to “attract women in the trade union movement” - the title of the seminar - is not so obvious. As some participants expressed it during the seminar, and during the evaluation mission, the concern, in the Baltic organisations, might very well be “how to attract men in the trade union movement”! • The content of the seminar organised in March 2008 – training of organisers - was largely unspecific and could have been useful for both men as women. • Recommendation: In the future, projects should define more clearly what should be the priority of a “gender’s dimension”. A lot of activities have already been developed in this area during the last decade What the organisations need is more specific programmes and activities, that would enable them to make one step forward. This could be supported by in-depth researches that would review, for example, the content of the collective agreements or that would survey the concrete situation of the women at the working place. This kind of researches could then provide the background for an internal debate inside the organisations, between women as well as between men and women, and for a clearly defined programme combining training and action.

17. Young people (1) Organising young workers is everywhere considered difficult, some unions show that at least this is possible. And it highlights also the potential of growth that the young workers represent for the trade union movement, if the unions would really pay attention to a few elements: • The unions should be orientated towards young workers. • Enterprises with young workforce, or with a large group of young workers should be specifically targeted for action; • Young leaders should be identified and entrusted to recruit new members, to organise and to represent them; • Services should be developed that meet the interests of the young workers • Unions should pay attention to the “social” dimension – and organise activities that enable young people to meet, to socialise and to “have fun” together. • Voluntary activities and free commitment should be encouraged with the support (political and material) from the unions and the union leaderships; • Informal networks – and use of modern technologies (SMS, internet…) – should be privileged to implement a very regular and proactive communication policy between the union and its members, • Unions should function and be alive at the regional and national level. This could facilitate the fact that the young union members, when they leave their company, stay members of their unions.

18. Young people (2) • In some unions, youth committees are set up, in the big companies and at the regional or national level. This could be a step forward to open the unions to the young workers, but the risk is to “encapsulate” the young trade unionists in friendly “youth clubs”, with a very limited impact on the development of the unions as a whole. Youth committees – active ones – are very useful, but they should not become a substitute to an active policy of opening the unions to young workers and of promoting young leaders. • Recommendation: According to some very rough estimation, the young workers would represent something like 10 % of the whole membership of the partner organisations. However, more accurate data should be established, in particular at the company and professional union level, where they could be compared with the characteristics of the workforce of the sectors and enterprises. This could provide the background for the definition of clear development objectives.

19. Young people (3) • A Summer School was organised at the end of June-July 08. It was genuinely appreciated by all the participants. However, its impact would have been greater (1) if the participants would have been selected on the basis of clearer criteria, (2) if the specificity of such a Baltic-Nordic seminar would have been better defined, in regards to the kind of training that could or should have been implemented at the national level. • Recommendation 1: regional projects should go further than “awareness raising” activities – this is a dimension that should be left to the national level – and should specify their objectives – of training and of action – more specifically. Concrete researches on the situation of the women or of the young workers, on the labour market, at the workplaces, and in the unions, should help to set up concrete and measurable objectives for programmes that should combine research, training and action. • Recommendation 2: projects implemented at different levels (company, professional unions, national confederations, regional – trans-Baltic or Nordic-Baltic) should define, for each level, their objectives of intervention. Basic training, or awareness raising, should be implemented at the national, or even the local level. Events organised at the regional level should not duplicate with the tasks of the previous levels, but should provide the framework for exchange and coordination between leaders and experts in charge of responsibilities in their different organisations. The selection of the participants to these regional events should make sure that these objectives could be achieved.

20. Migration (1) • According to an International Monetary Fund (IMF) calculation, around 10 % of the Lithuanian labour force (157,480 people) work in one of the EU 25 countries; 8.6 % of the Latvian labour force (99,600 people) work in one of these EU 25 countries, or in the EEA countries and Switzerland; and 4.5 % of the Estonians (31,030 people) work in one of the 25 EU countries (figures for the year 2006). The three Baltic countries range among the five countries of EU which have the highest rate of emigration (Lithuania, Latvia, Slovakia, Poland and Estonia). This situation has of course a direct impact on the labour market of the origin countries. • People leaving their country to work abroad represent a social and economic problem for their country of origin. But they represent a union challenge mainly for the host countries. That’s why it requires a close cooperation between the sending countries and the receiving countries organisations. • The key challenge however for the Baltic trade unions – beside the question of their legitimate concerns for their fellow workers working abroad – is to promote a labour and employment policy at home.

21. Migration (2) • The Baltic countries are confronted also to a phenomenon of immigration, workers coming from eastern or even far eastern countries, to work in the Baltic republics, in particular in Lithuania. This phenomenon is often related to informal economy. • Solidarumas and LDF have paid a special attention to this phenomenon. They have signed cooperation agreements with KVPU and VOST, in Ukraine, and Solidarumas was confronted to some particularly difficult case in the sector of construction. • Recommendation 1: this is a global phenomenon that could not be handled at the level of a project focusing on the origin countries. The receiving countries are on the front line, and should take the first responsibilities. Cooperation agreements could contribute to the information of workers before they leave to work abroad, but their organisation, their legal and material assistance, the monitoring of the workplaces to make sure that the companies fully respect the legal and conventional regulations of the country, could only be done by the trade union movement of the receiving countries. • Recommendation 2: Baltic countries however are not only sending countries, but also receiving ones – at least on a limited scale. In the future, the evolution of the situation – often related with the informal economy – should be closely monitored, and support should be provided to the organisations that are ready to develop legal and material assistance to seasonal or longer-term immigrant workers, that will try to organise and represent them, and, by doing so will practically strive against the expansion of informal economy.

22. IT technologies and Website: • A seminar was organised on 16-18 September in Jurmala, Latvia. During this seminar, the participants discussed the way to improve the communication policies through e-mails, websites and internet. • Three years ago, a specific website – www.baltictu.net – was set up in the framework of the first project. The website was continued in 2005-6 and in 2007-8. • Recommendation: beyond the question of a specific website for a project – is it needed or not? – the organisations should be encouraged to develop a pro-active policy of communication, using the different IT, to establish regular contacts with their grassroots’ leaders and activists, to promote their activities and their services to non union members. Pilot actions or campaigns targeting in priority the young trade unionists and the young workers, could be set up. This kind of project could build on the reflection engaged during the IT seminar organised by the present project.

23. Handbook • The project included the writing and publication of a manual, which was supposed to combine a “basic presentation of trade unionism”, as well as a collection of “best practices of social dialogue”, building for this on “the achievements of the project”. The target groups were supposed to be “the trade union representatives” but “could also be used by employers and their organisations”. • Recommendation: it could be the aim of a small project to prepare – and to test – education material that would be at the disposal of the organisations to train organisers, or to assist them in designing and in planning organising and recruiting campaigns. Trainers should be involved in such a project, that could build on the material produced by the present project - Handbook of Best Practices, activities reports, background documents used during the project - and also on the direct and often very rich experience accumulated by the leaders and activists that took part in the project.