The EU live Perfromance Social Dialogue Committee has launched a new project to tackle the commercial side of the sector. The Social Partners have addressed the challenge of enhancing social dialogue within EU member states in the past in several joint projects. Although it was not necessarily intended, previous joint work in the sector has in practice almost exclusively focused on the public sector, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe. Therefore, the European social partners have now agreed to map and assess the situation in the commercial sector, which remains largely unmapped in a significant number of EU countries, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe. This project will focus on five countries, namely Poland, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Romania, and Serbia.
The aim of the project is to research the state of social dialogue in the commercial live performance sector these countries, to understand the possible obstacles to social dialogue and look at ways to improve the situation.
The main element of the action is a study based on desk-research and face-to-face discussions with national stakeholders. The field research will be implemented by a local researcher in each respective country. The research at national level will also include focus group meetings with all relevant stakeholders and interviews with national social partners. This will allow the collection of data in the national context and will provide a platform for discussion among the national stakeholders on the status of social dialogue in the country in question. A lead researcher has been contracted to guide and supervise the national research and to compile the national outputs into a final report, which will describe the situation of social dialogue in the project countries, describe identified obstacles to social dialogue, and propose possible ways forward in improving social dialogue in these countries.
The project includes a regional conference in one of the project countries with the aim to provide an opportunity to the project participants to share their experience and expertise, to present the findings of the national research from each project country, and to ensure that the regional view is incorporated in the final report. Towards the end of the project period a final conference will be organised, which will allow us to engage a broader range of stakeholders in the discussion about social dialogue in the commercial live performance sector. In the final conference we will also present the findings of the research.
In addition to these specific objectives, the project will also allow us to establish contact with organisations with whom we currently have no contact, such as employer organisations who operate in the sector. If such organisations do not exist yet, we hope that employers and workers from the commercial sector will find a source of inspiration from the project work to look towards creating a body which will represent them.
