The OSE and the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), together with the Institute for Economic and Social Research
(IRES, Italy), the Fundaciòn Primero de Mayo (Spain), the Hans-Böckler-Stiftung (WSI, Germany), the Oxford University (United Kingdom), the Vienna Chamber of Labour (Austria), the National Institute for Working Life and The Swedish Trade Unions in Co-operation (SALTSA, Sweden) and the Trade Union Forum (FZZ, Poland) successfully proposed a research project to the European Commission on “Providing welfare through Social Dialogue: A renewed role for Social Partners?” with the aim of analysing the “voluntary occupational welfare” (VOW) or “contract welfare”, a phenomenon that consists in the provision of supplementary welfare benefits through collective bargaining and(or) unilateral bargaining by employers.
The main purposes of the PROWELFARE project is to map the increased role of contract welfare in eight EU member states (Austria, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, Sweden and the UK), through the analysis on three policy domains (health care; vocational education and training; reconciliation of work and family life) and on three policy sectors (manufacturing, public and services sectors) in order to identify the main consequences for Social Dialogue.
The main outputs of the project will be the reports on the national case studies, a final synthesis report and the publication of the results of the survey conducted. The OSE will provide its expertise managing the scientific coordination and the dissemination of the research findings, taking care of both the internal and external communication of the project in progress.
OSE researchers: Dalila Ghailani, Ramón Peña-Casas and Sebastiano Sabato
