Praise from COTANCE for new collective bargaining tool
Representatives of tannery workers in seven European Union member states have jointly developed a tool to support collective bargaining and share best practice in employee-employer relations.
Sponsored by the European Union, the tool has the name ERICA (European Repository of the Industry’s Collective Agreements). Work on it started in February 2021 and a third steering committee meeting took place on December 2.
So far, the project partners have gathered the main elements of the collective agreements in place in the tanning sector in Spain, Hungary, Portugal, France, Italy and Germany and will integrate them into a searchable online database. Sweden is the seventh partner country. The UK, which is no longer part of the European Union, has observer status on the project.
This database will allow trade union representatives and others to compare key topics to support collective bargaining. The database will be exclusively for the use of the project partners, but there will also be a public area that will offer general information on the agreements and on the project itself.
The leather industry’s representative body in the European Union, COTANCE, has said a final project event will take place online in April to allow all stakeholders to look closely at the tool and discuss how best to use it. “The European leather Industry is again demonstrating leadership in social matters, offering tools that serve both employers and workers to design the labour relations of the future,” COTANCE said.
