However, given the probable impact on employment, Peter Scherrer went on to demand efficient, swift and ‘unbureaucratic’ usage of the instruments the European Union provides: the Globalisation Adjustment Fund, the Social Fund, and the Regional Funds.

The industry will need to increase the level of qualification of its workforce, and retain skilled workers. Therefore, possibilities to bridge short-time work or unemployment are necessary. Using employment agencies to train workers and offering them access to new skills are certainly ways to keep the workforce in the sector, and improve the workers’ capability to adjust to the emerging challenges that are expected to accompany the technological changes that the future will bring.

Commenting on the current economic situation, Peter Scherrer called on the industry to finally accept to enter into open, institutionalised social dialogue. He added that the employers’ organisation, ACEA, had, up to now, not paid enough attention to the importance and potential of such a forum and urged, “now that we are all struggling together in this economic downturn, we need, more than ever, the possibility to come to a common understanding, via a combined effort, of the problems we have to overcome”. For the EMF General Secretary, this reluctance is particularly unintelligible, as other social partners from the sector, CLEPA for example, representing the automotive supply industry, or CECRA, for the after-market players, are already very open to dialogue and cooperation.

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PRESS 29/2008

The EMF is the representative body defending the interests of workers in the European metal industry. The EMF has a mandate for the external representation and coordination of the metalworkers' unions and a mandate to engage in bargaining at European level.

For further information please contact:
Editor, Peter Scherrer, EMF General Secretary
Wolf Jäcklein, EMF Policy Advisor on: +32(0)2 227 10 57