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Joint Study on the European Social Partners

Seminar on « The Employment Impact of Climate Change Policies »

Brussels - 29 June 2010

Alain Mestre et Philippe Morvannou, Syndex

CASE STUDY Belgium

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The Belgian case

The social partners co-operate with the State, mainly through traditional bodies and/or bodies created to deal with these matters (at national or regional level). The social dialogue has been able to evolve and take on board environmental and climate issues.

Among the initiatives resulting from these social dialogues, two caught our attention. These were the Ecocheques initiative and the Clean Development Mechanisms (CDM)

Ecocheque initiative:

This initiative was established in the wake of a dialogue organised within the Conseil National du Travail (National Labour Council). Following this dialogue, a collective agreement was signed on 20 February 2009. This is Collective Agreement no. 98 of 20 February 2009 relating to ecocheques. The agreement defines and provides a frame for the ecocheques (green cheques).

The signatories to the project are : the Fédération des entreprises de Belgique (Belgian Companies Federation), the national organisations of the middle classes, “De Boerenbond”, the Fédération wallonne de l’Agriculture (Walloon Agriculture Federation), the Confédération des syndicats chrétiens de Belgique (Confederation of Christian Trades Unions of Belgium), the FGTB and the Centrale générale des syndicats.

The ecocheques have a dual purpose :

Change the behaviour of the workers and incentivise them to give preference to buying environmentally-friendly products and services..

Promote employment.

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Clean Development Mecanism 

Since 2003, Belgium has had one of the mechanisms provided for in the Kyoto Protocol : the CDM. Although already working within the Marrakech agreements at international level, Belgium, and the social partners more particularly, wanted - at the initiative of the trades unions - new rules to be established that would provide supervision of their CDM projects.

Some of these new rules : new approval and assessment criteria for current projects have been set (demonstration of the economic and social sustainability of the project upstream, field impact surveys). The monitoring procedure for the obtaining of funding has also been specified. The common factor in these new arrangements is that the social dimension is an imperative.

The new rules have a twofold purpose :

Preserving employment both for the host country and the investor country.

Preserving/ respecting work conditions.

Overall, the objective here is to avoid disguised relocations and to ensure a win-win system, especially for the host country.

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The specific case of the United Kingdom 

During our research, the United Kingdom appeared to be an interesting example. The United Kingdom has in fact initiated a series of social dialogues, including a bilateral initiative (i.e. resulting from a dialogue between social partners) that is up and running : the “Green Workplaces” project.

The “Green workplaces” project : a bilateral TUC-CBI initiative.

After a series of pilot projects, the TUC (UK trades union organisation) launched the Green Workplaces project.

It is an initiative co-funded by the Carbon Trust and the Trades Unions.

The project is run jointly by the TUC and the CBI. It is coordinated by a steering group whose main task is to report to the Trade Union Sustainable Development Advisory Committee (better known by the acronym TUSDAC).

Six workplaces were selected : Corus Steelworks, Friends Provident (Financial Services), DEFRA (the Government’s Environment Ministry), the TUC’s head office, Scottish Power and The British Museum).

The aim of the project : promote more sustainable practices in the workplace.

Main outcomes :

The main outcome of the project was a demonstration that it is possible to carry out joint projects between employer organisations and trades union organisations.

The project, established in 2006, has led to a number of more practical outcomes : changes in employee workplace behaviours, enabling the energy consumption of workers in their workplace to be reduced.

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