Embracing social dialogue

Would it be possible to get employers and employees around the table in the departments of Tarija and Chuquisaca, as had happened before in the larger departments of Santa Cruz and Cochabamba? That was the question when Roel Rotshuizen and Arnaldo Montero from CNV Internationaal and Sip Nieuwsma and Peter Boorsma from DECP travelled to Bolivia last April.

It is the economic downturn that makes the unions in the department open to dialogue with regional employers, as is also apparent when the delegation visited the COD, the central trade union. And without companies there are no employees, the trade unionists also know.

Rotshuizen and Nieuwsma talked about the Dutch consensus model and about the functioning of the Labour Foundation. Boorsma showed that employers and trade unions in Peru have set up their own labour foundation, following the Dutch example. Montero evaluated the initiatives in Santa Cruz and Cochabamba.

Both the representatives of the employers’ organisation and the trade union confirmed that this is an approach that matches with their needs and expressed the intention to take steps to get there.

In Sucre, the capital of both Bolivia and the Chuquisaca department the meetings took place according to a similar pattern and with the same conclusions.