15.06.22
Description of the project
Labour shortages, high levels of labour turnover and high staff attrition have become a common occurrence across all sectors in the European economies, leading to tight labour markets. Over its two-year period, UNI Europa’s RETAIN project (VS/2019/0292) focused on trade union strategies to tackle these issues in the Industrial Cleaning, Private Security and Long-Term Care sectors.
The project makes a unique contribution to develop policies and enhance unions’ strategic capacity at the company-level, in relation to clients, at the sectoral level, country level, and EU-level. Beyond that, the project also has pioneered new union approaches to lobby institutional investors.
The project finds that labour shortages and high levels of staff turnover are associated with understaffing, higher levels of work stress and ultimately decreased quality in service provision, which undermines the attractiveness of the sector. This vicious cycle particularly affects trade unions who are no longer able to represent workers and employees adequately. Across these sectors, we identify a gendered dimension of the problem.
Due to Covid-19, the project was forced to hold all planned meetings and workshops online. Yet, this allowed more persons to participate in the project activities who otherwise would have not been able to participate. These meetings identified further issues arising from high levels of labour turnover, cutting edge practices, as well policy proposals. These were complemented with in-depth interviews, as well as an academic literature review. The published reports and literature review thus provide trade unions, policy-makers and employers with novel perspectives on the subject matter.
The respective publications, a social media package and animated videos will allow UNI Europa to continue to disseminate the project findings to a wider audience.
Key results:
For more information, please contact Mark Bergfeld mark.bergfeld@uniglobalunion.org
The following documents were produced in the context of the projects:
Reports:
Best Practice Report (DE, ES, FR)
Tackling labour shortages and turnover in the long-term care sector (ES, DE, FR)
Tackling labour shortages and turnover in the Property Services sector (DE, ES, FR)
Article:
This Summer’s Airport Chaos shows that Security Guards and Cleaners Remain Essential
Presentations:
03.10.24
News