On August 1, 2022, the Polish Migrant Workers Association in cooperation with the German trade union of construction and agricultural workers IG BAU, the European Association of Migrant Workers and the Ukrainian trade union of construction workers Profbud, launched the six-month project German Polish Ukrainian Societies for Cooperation. It is co-financed by the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs from the Eastern Partnership funds.
The project develops cooperation between organizations to promote the integration of migrants and provide them with decent working conditions through transnational dialogue between societies. This project seems to be even more important regarding to the war situation in Ukraine, where the huge need of social dialogue appears.
As apart to of the project two international meetings were organized.
The first International meeting took place on the 21st of September in Lublin. It was a hybrid conference with the representatives of Polish, German and Ukrainian trade union organizations and associations.
There was a workshop and lively discussion on the democratic values and social dialogue in Poland, Germany and Ukraine and its positive outcomes.
Participants decided also on the topics of the podcasts which would be place on the project website www.dialog-ua-pl-de.org.
The second international meeting took place on the 8th of November in Cracow also as a hybrid conference with the representatives form Poland (PSPM), Germany (EVW) and Ukraine (Profbud). In spite of the difficult war situation in Ukraine we were glad to welcome Mariia Kupris from from the Ukrainian construction trade union in person. Vasyl Adreyev and Oleg Borysov joined the conference online.
In the morning, Kai Schwabe (IG BAU) gave a lecture on the topics of trade union democracy, collective bargaining and dual training in Germany. His presentation aroused great interest. It was particularly fruitful to compare experiences in the three countries.
There was as well a vivid discussion on the social dialogue platform website of the project and what contact should be placed there. Although the platform is still under construction, interesting content can already be found there. The podcasts with the trade unionists from Ukraine and Germany can already be found on the website. Lots of other content coming in the next few weeks. All the project publications will be systematically placed on the website
A date has also been set for the online conference for the larger audience, which will take place on December 12 at 2:00 p.m.
