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Employers play a key role in creating jobs, increasing national wealth and improving living conditions. Strong and independent Employers’ Organizations (EOs) set up and functioning according to the standards and principles of freedom of association are vital for tripartite social dialogue on labour and social issues. Employers' Organizations help to create the conditions for enterprise success, productivity growth and economic development by influencing the environment in which enterprises do business and by providing services that improve their individual performance.
Employers’ Organizations did not exist in this region in the Soviet times; the first ones were created during the transition of the early 1990s. While all countries now have some form of a national employers’ organization, many are weak in terms of their influence and membership coverage and are struggling to make ends meet with limited staff and expertise, while others are focused on economic issues to the exclusion of labour and social matters.
Thus, Employers’ Organizations in the region face the dual challenges of becoming more strategic and expanding their membership, while increasing their capacity to engage with governments and trade unions in policymaking on labour and social issues. To expand membership, EOs need to provide new services and improve the quality of existing ones. To adequately participate in policymaking, they must build technical expertise on a range of social and labour issues.
Therefore ILO Moscow is working to strengthen the capacity of the Employers’ Organizations with a focus on their further development as representative organizations – the true voice of employers - in their countries. This is being achieved through:
- training of EO senior management on operational issues such as design and implementation of sound governance practices, sustainable business plans, successful advocacy and communication strategy, adequate and sustainable income generation mechanisms for employers organizations;
- assisting EOs in developing new services for their members, in particular in providing training to employers on lobbying, business management, collective bargaining, negotiation and conflict management skills; and
- building the EOs’ technical expertise to enable them to be fully engaged in social dialogue on labour and social issues, including social security, occupational safety and health in the workplace, equal treatment for women and men, combating trafficking, child labour and forced labour, and fighting the spread of HIV AIDS through education in the workplace.
Our main message is that employers should be actively engaged on labour and social issues, since these affect their business and the workers they employ. The best way to achieve such involvement is building a strong association that represents their views. We also encourage EOs to expand their membership while maintaining their independence and to encourage their members to promote corporate social responsibility.
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