TANSIRC2 - Towards a New Start of Industrial Relations in Construction in Central and East European Countries 2.0 – Social Dialogue Project

Brief description and main aims: 

The main objective of the TANSIRC 2.0 project – which stands for “Towards A New Start of Industrial Relations in Construction in Central and East European Countries” – is to (re)build, promote and foster industrial relations in the construction industry in the Central Eastern European Countries (CEECs). With this project, the partners aim at creating a stronger added value for the concerned organisations in the CEECs and to build up the capacity of the trade unions and the employers federations to enter in “negotiation” within a system of industrial relations.

More specifically, project objectives are:

• Reinforcing the currently - still weak - social dialogue in the CEECs and the lack of communication between national partners in construction industry.
• Identifying which challenges the COVID-19 pandemic has brought to the construction industry and how to address them.
• Improving the image of construction sector in society and thereby attracting more young people and women.
• Identifying disappearing construction professions due to digitisation, together with the new skills and competences and ways of working needed.
• Addressing undeclared work and illegal practices in CEECs.

Why FIEC is dealing with this topic:

The choice of focusing on Eastern and Central European countries is based on an internal assessment of the European social partners (FIEC and the European Federation of Building and Woodworkers EFBWW) and the outcome of the Eurofound representatives’ study, showing that the system of industrial relations in CEECs have deteriorated significantly in the last decade.

In 2018-2020, the European social partners launched a first edition of the TANSIRC project, in collaboration with the European Association of Paritarian Institutions (AEIP). However, as capacity building is a long and continuous process, FIEC and EFBWW together with AEIP committed themselves to a long-term engagement to strengthen the capacity of the social partners of the construction in the CEECs.

Finally, in CEECs, the construction industry has been heavily impacted by the COVID-19 crisis, which has created extraordinary challenges for a continued social dialogue. Therefore, it is important to aim at creating a stronger added value for the concerned organisations in the CEECs and to further build up their capacity to put in place a strong and healthy system of industrial relations.