Call for Expression of Interest for

Professional Expertise in the Field of Promoting Social Dialogue

Building Capacity of Employers’ Organisations (EOs)

Budget line: IPA – Human Resources Development 04 06 01

MKD/13/02/MKD

Introduction and background

The beneficiary country gained the candidate status for the accession to European Union (EU) in 2005 and a number of progress reports by the European Commission (EC) indicated the need to further develop social dialogue (SD) among main stakeholders in the economy and at all levels. The country has a clear objective to attract foreign direct investment and create more and better jobs. Developed social dialogue and strong SD institutions will give a signal to the potential investors that the country has stable industrial relations.

The Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance (IPA) project on Promoting Social Dialogue is funded by the EU and is being implemented by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) under the leadership of the ILO Budapest office. The overall objective of this project is to extend and enhance tripartite and bipartite social dialogue as a means to achieve economic growth and social progress. This will be achieved through institutional and legislative improvement along with activities aimed at strengthening the capacities of tripartite actors in the labour market to engage effectively in social dialogue. The project has a comprehensive approach and aims to provide technical support to both institutions and participants in social dialogue processes, including collective bargaining at the national, branch, and local level.

The project consists of three interlinked components, designed to address challenges which national tripartite actors are currently facing in a coherent and complementary manner:

Component 1: Enhancing tripartite social dialogue on national and local level

This component focuses on capacity building activities to be delivered by the ILO technical specialists along with practitioners from EU member states (MS) on topics such as wage fixing in the public sector, minimum wage setting and its relation to the informal economy, employment relationship, social security reforms, active labour market policies, youth employment, collective bargaining benefits including wage-productivity linkage among others to the members of the ESC and its permanent secretariat. The project will also facilitate the creation of an external “pool” of technical expertise the ESC will be able to draw on in order to expand its research scope.

Component 2: Encouraging collective bargaining and setting sectoral collective bargaining infrastructures

This component of the project will enhance the capacity of both the government and the social partners to increase the effectiveness of collective bargaining. Measures will be devised and implemented with ILO assistance in the framework of a national tripartite Action Plan.

Technical capacity of the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy to pro-actively perform its key functions to promote collective bargaining including the setting of enabling regulatory and institutional frameworks will be strengthened. At the same time, the capacity of employers’ organizations and trade unions to negotiate effectively and to reach out to potential members will be reinforced. The latter will be achieved through implementation of a training programme on how to effectively engage in collective bargaining targeting employers’ and workers’ organizations at national and sectoral level.

Component 3: Establishing an operational amicable settlement of labour disputes

Under this component, the project will assist in the establishment of an operational and cost-effective mechanism for amicable settlement of labour disputes, and will support the creation and training of a roster of specialised labour mediators/conciliators. Once implemented, the new mechanism is expected to support the social partners in preventing and resolving disputes arising in the process of collective bargaining.

External collaborators/consulting companies working with employers’ organisations

As detailed above, independent and representative employers’ organizations are one of the pre-requisites of a sound and stable industrial relations system. Component 2 will particularly focus on the capacity building of employers’ organizations. The present call for expression of interest aims at prospecting experts who will be engaged in the capacity building of employers’ organizations. Activities would be coordinated by Mr Dragan Radić, the Senior Specialist for Employers’ Activities of the Budapest ILO office.

Local and international collaborators and/or consulting companies working in the following fields of expertise and interested in completing assignments detailed below are encouraged to submit their applications: