Activities

Social dialogue

Since 1992, the European Trade Union Federation for Services and Skills, UNI Europa, and CoESS are actively involved in the European Sectoral Social Dialogue for the private security services sector.

They discuss issues of mutual interest and take joint action at European level. This has allowed them to build up mutual trust and confidence and, more importantly, to regard each other as genuine and representative partners with a common interest in moving the sector forward in a way that benefits both companies and workers.

CoESS and UNI Europa develop their joint Work Programme on a yearly basis and define their priorities and objectives. The current Work Programme for 2020/2021 can be found here.

CoESS and UNI Europa have, over the years, adopted a number of joint declarations and have published thanks to EU-funding a joint Best Value Manual to support organisations in purchasing private security services.  The document, entitled “Buying quality private security services”, was developed thanks to European Commission funds and is available in 14 languages here:  http://www.securebestvalue.org. 

Another important initiative is the jointly developed Online interactive Risk Assessment tool for health and safety at work for the private security services - a web application developed by the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA) and funded by the EU.

In October 2018, CoESS and UNI Europa finished their joint project on “Anticipating, Preparing and Managing Employment Change in the Private Security Industry” which had been funded with the support of the European Commission.

The follow-up on the findings and policy recommendations of this project is an incremental part of the ongoing social dialogue. In this context, CoESS and UNI Europa launched in March 2021 another EU-funded project for the strengthening of Social Dialogue on "INTEL: Skills Intelligence for the Private Security Services".

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