THE SOCIAL DIALOGUE AND RELATED ACTIVITIES

The above-mentioned informal dialogue was facilitated by 3 main conferences funded by the EU Commission (as encouragement of pre-social dialogue activities in the hospitals sector) and focused around 3 main items:

- Recruitment and retention in the hospital sector, where particularly all the problems linked to the cross-border mobility and to the ethical recruitment were tackled;
- Ageing of the workforce in the hospital sector, taking partly, but not sufficiently, into account the repercussion that the ageing of the population can have on the delivery of healthcare services;
- Skill needs in the hospital sector, tackling not only the current skill mismatch but also the need for new professional profiles in the hospital sector

From a political point of view, the informal dialogue had a boost after the set up, in 2002, of the so-called Joint Representative Task Force, a body more or less formally gathering representatives from EPSU and CEEP interested in the process.

The increasing activities of the task force, combined with the clear interest of the Commission in having the hospital sector opened (in order to have policy in that field directly steered by the social partners), made clear the necessity to set up a specific organisation allowing the interested CEEP members to initiate a formal sectoral social dialogue. This was an obvious pre-condition as CEEP, a cross-sectoral social partner, would have put its cross-sectoral representativity into danger by directly entering a sectoral social dialogue (not to say that this would have gone against the representativity criteria set up by the Commission).

HOSPEEM and ESPU have already issued the broad lines of a work programme for the years 2006-2007, with the aim to carry out some concrete actions on the 3 above-mentioned items.
First of all, 3 working group will be set up in order to:

- Identify common positions for cross-border recruitment of hospital personnel
- Identify Member State and regional initiatives to promote realistic active ageing policies.
- Define existing categories of hospital professionals and workers, identifying successful training initiatives and weak-points.

The working groups will then establish what kind of tool (framework agreement, framework of actions, joint recommendations etc…) provided by the European social dialogue are suitable in order to make step forwards in each of the fields.
Even if it is unlikely that a specific chapter will be devoted to it in the work programme, a large part of the work programme will have the aim to encourage and assist capacity building of the hospital sector social dialogue in new Member States and acceding countries.

Matters such as social services of general interest or the streamlining of healthcare policies through the open method of Co-ordination have for the moment been excluded from the scope of the work programme but will very likely be raised in the discussions, especially at the request of EPSU.
Besides the work with the trade unions, HOSPEEM will be conducting in the months to come intense unilateral activities such as:

- Recruitment of members in order to broaden the representativity of the organisation
- Capacity building of the employers’ organisations in the hospital and healthcare sector in the new Member States and acceding countries

Setting up of a network to monitor the main policies launched in the healthcare and hospital field, ensuring together with HOPE that the employers’ view at European level is duly heard.