The 8th and 9th of February, the kick-off meeting of the “BARSERVICE – Smart bargaining in the services sector: overview, challenges, opportunities” project took place at the Faculty of Economics, University of Belgrade. The funding of the project is provided by the European Commission, DG Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion. The meeting was attended by representatives from IRMO: Hrvoje Butković, PhD, and Matea Roknić, while Višnja Samardžija, PhD was following the meeting online. The Central European Labour Studies Institute (CELSI) from Bratislava is the coordinator of the project, while IRMO participates in the project as one of the partners.
The meeting began with an introduction and presentation of the coordinators, partners, and associate partners. The program consisted of the presentation of the project’s objectives and activities focusing on industrial relations in the services sector of EU Member States (Croatia, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Romania, Italy, and France) and Candidate Countries (North Macedonia, Serbia, and Turkey). The project covers four subsectors in the services sector: trade, finance, social care, and publishing.
The participants discussed the specific objectives of the project, including: i) understanding labor market trends, ii) understanding the challenges arising from the deregulation of the labor market, iii) analyzing the causes of low levels of collective bargaining and low levels of unionization in six EU Member States and three Candidate Countries, iv) collecting and analyzing 72 collective agreements from selected countries, and v) identifying opportunities for strengthening collective bargaining as a response to the challenges in the services sector.
More information is available on the project’s website:
