Welcome to the event - The third conference on Social Dialogue in the Hospital Sector in Europe.
The process has started under its current format in May 2000. The second conference to examine how to develop, at the European level, social dialogue in the hospital sector took place on 4-5 February 2002. There were over 100 participants from 25 European countries.
At this conference, there were three main areas of value:
An examination of social dialogue in the member states’ hospital systems.
The detailed examination of the theme “Free movement of workers”, in the context of hospitals.
The formulation of Joint Declaration by participating organisations.
An examination of social dialogue in the member state healthcare and hospital systems.
The links and distinctions between the “five-models” of health care systems were examined. Examples were taken from Denmark, France, the UK, Germany and the Czech Republic.
This exercised allowed participants to see that a large number of the issues that were being tackled had similarities across different countries:
It could be observed that the development of quality issues, change of work organisation, and the increasing involvement of patients, were commonplace responses throughout Europe.
The essential point across this section of the conference was that in each instance, the level of communications between hospital staff representatives and employers, proved to be central to any process of reform.
In other words, this section of the conference illustrated that social dialogue in the hospital sector was already an integral part of the member state health systems to new challenges.
Free movement of workers
The conference took as its main theme this issue of free movement of workers. This was subdivided into three sub-themes:
Free movement of health sector personnel in Europe
Differences in culture, education, organisation and language
Recruitment and retention - practices, procedures and problems
Participants were of the shared opinion that valuable initiatives, and indeed potential pitfalls, were highlighted by this process.
Formulation of Joint Declaration by participating organisations
The structural part of the process was addressed in the conference declaration.
In practical terms, the most significant action was to establish a Joint Representative Task Force, to examine the issues, and to agree how the process could be developed.
The conference declaration stated that:
“In order to sustain this progress towards social dialogue, the conference endorses that the parties organising the conference set up a joint representative task force to take the necessary steps to formulate a working programme as a basis for the future social dialogue.
It is testimony to the foresightedness of that decision that I can report that the task force has meet on 8 separate occasions in the last two years. It has been the driving force in the preparation of this conference. The fact that this task force has met on average, every three months since the last conference, illustrates that there is core group committed to the success of the process. This is essential, but our challenge now is to widen the number of organisations committed to success.
It is important to note some other aspects of the declaration, most importantly the reference that:
“This second conference underlines the importance of developing the social dialogue in the hospital sector, not least in the light of the forthcoming enlargement of the EU”.
The joint declaration states that
“In many EU countries a growing lack of qualified personnel in the hospital sector is recorded. These problems have to be addressed using concerted and co-ordinated efforts. One of the main priorities must be a thorough and fundamental effort to create and develop more and better education. Development of competencies at all levels is requested with the objective of maintaining and qualifying the workforce and to keep up the continuous quality development within the health care sector. The conference acknowledges a joint responsibility to solve the problems of recruitment”.
The declaration concludes by stating that:
“It is therefore necessary continuously to develop the social dialogue. The conference states its willingness to continue to make progress in the field of social dialogue for dealing with issues of the hospital sector at European level. The conference asks the Commission to support the objectives of the conference and expects the Commission to show its willingness, by supporting the activities with both technical and financial means”.
In that regard it is my happy task to note that this is already the case as it is now my pleasure to introduce the head of the Social Dialogue Unit of the European commission Mr. Jackie Morin to deliver the key note speech.
