L I B R A Let’s Improve Bargaining, Relations and

Agreements on work and life times balance

Project co-funded by the European Commission

DG Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion

budget heading 04.03.03.01, Industrial Relatio

ns and Social Dialogue.

Roberta Caragnano,

ADAPT Senior Research Fellow

LIBRA Partners

ADAPT – Association for International and Comparative Studies in

Labour Law and Industrial Relations (Italy)

IAL - Innovation, Learning, Employment

(Italy)

CISL – Italian Confederation of Workers’ Trade Union

ABVV-FGTB – General Federation of Belgian Labour (Belgium)

INCSMSP – National Institute for Science Research in The Field of Labour and

Social Protection (Romania)

MOSz- National Confederation of Workers’ Council- MOSZ (Hungary)

Objectives

Identify and investigate, with a focus on work-life

balance, all the tools made available by collective

bargaining that have an organisational impact on

businesses in terms of working time flexibility and

work organisation, including company-level and

inter-organisational services for individuals and

families, as well as initiatives to promote training.

Added Value

The project aims at identifying, in close cooperation

with research institutes, trade unions and

international institutions, innovative solutions

adopted through (centralised, decentralised,

company-level) collective bargaining, in the field of

work-life balance, with the aim to promote

mainstreaming actions.

Methodology

Researchers adopted an integrated methodology, with a view to

analysing the relationship between decentralised bargaining

and work-life balance in quantitative terms, as well as the

relationship between contractual-organisational flexibility and

work-life balance, understood as work-life balance policies

adopted by companies and complementary welfare.

Work-life Balance

Producti-vity

Flexibility

Activities

Empirical analysis of laws, national and decentralised

collective agreements in the countries taking part in the project

(Italy, Belgium, Hungary and Romania).

Survey of the most innovative solutions developed by

collective bargaining and adopted in national as well as

decentralised agreements in the countries under investigation.

Activities

Study of the most interesting (formal and informal) best

practices adopted by companies.

Implementation of a Permanent Observatory at the

European level

www.adapt.it/libra

Data of the Observatory

56%

44%

Collective agreements Laws

Figures of the Observatory

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

Collective agreementsLaws

286

227

1.Flexibility:

a) of working time (“vertical” and “horizontal” part-time, weekend work,

individual working time arrangements, continuous working day, working

time accounts)

b) of work organisation (job sharing, shifts, leaves, telework)

2. Services for individuals and families:

a) services provided at company, interorganisational, as well as local

level (healthcare, recreational and medical prevention programmes)

4. Training/Placement/Outplacement

Which Fields of Research?

They promote work-life balance and are based on the

theoretical analysis of documents as well as on the analysis

of real cases.

They involve different actions at the same time: strategies,

methodologies, organisational choices and operations.

They can be reproduced and implemented in other contexts

different from those in which they first developed.

Characteristics of Good Practices

Nestlè and Sanpellegrino

Increase in the number of days (from one to four) that the

father can take as paid leave, and introduction of a 2-

week parental leave for fathers paid up to 100% of the

salary in the first three years of the child.

Summer part-time enables part-time workers to shift from

“horizontal” to “vertical” part-time arrangements during

summer time when childcare responsibilities become

more demanding.

Bitron S.p.A

With the agreements of the 90s and of the following

years, part-time work is no longer a tool to avoid layoffs

but rather a contractual tool to improve work-life

balance and increase the quality of life.

Bitron S.p.A

Voluntary part-time

Emergency part-time

Organisational and family-friendly flexibility

Women’s employment

Lifelong learning

Services

Leaves (the company-level agreement provides for the

possibility to split up parental leave over a longer period

of time; and additional (also short) leaves are allowed

for family needs. In this case workers are granted an

advance on their severance pay)

Thank you for your attention!

www.adapt.it

roberta.caragnano@adapt.it