The PERC Executive Committee Meeting
The PERC Executive Committee met in Brussels on 21 March 2016. It was chaired by the PERC President Irakli Petriashvili. Around 100 trade unionists from all parts of Europe took part in it.
The participants agreed upon the main priorities for the PERC actions in 2016: migration and multinational enterprises. A special attention was put to the attacks against trade unionists in Turkey and general shrinking of democratic space in this country. Luca Visentini, PERC General Secretary also addressed the challenge of trade union rights violations everywhere in Europe, noting such countries, as Spain, UK, Belarus and others. Jaap Wienen, ITUC Deputy General Secretary, introduced the ITUC Frontlines and action priorities for 2016, calling all the PERC members to act in that framework.
The representative of the EU External Action Service Frederic Shwandt gave information about the Review of the EU Neighborhood policies. The participants of the meeting underlined critical deficiencies of the present policies, particular, the absence of social dimension and social dialog as a priority dimensions. Particular criticism was linked with the fact of domination of NGOs and project organisations in the civil society forums and neglect of the role of social partners and other membership based organisations in that context.
The priority of trade union actions within global supply chains was debated with interventions from the ITUC Campaign and Communication Director Tim Noonan about ITUC Scandal report, HTUR policy advisor Jeroen Beirnaert about preparations for the discussion on the subject in the International Labour Conference later this year and Mischa Terzyk from Industrial All European Trade Union about the example of trade union coordination in Airbus global value chains. The participants decided to form a list of MNEs for analysis and possible actions in cooperation with the Global Union Federations and their European structures.
The PERC Executive Committee adopted minutes of the previous meeting, report of the activities, including reports of the Women and Youth Committees and the financial report and the plan of activities for 2016. It also introduced the PERC General Assembly Standing Orders document as an appendix to the PERC Constitution.
The meeting was attended by the member of the PERC Executive Committee, the chairman of the Confederation of Trade Unions of Armenia Eduard Tumasyan.
See web-cite: http://perc.ituc-csi.org/
