Profile of VET organisation

Name of organization: OBES (Federation of Industrial Workers Union)

Address: 31, Kanigos str. 10682 Athens

Country: Greece

E-mail[email protected]

 

Type of VET institute: Further education and training.

No of staff:

No of trainees:

Quality Management Dimension

Stimulating active involvement of trainees coming from different countries.

Baseline / problem

OBES has a long experience of involvement in the application of Directive about the European Works Councils in European-scale companies and Directive 2001/86/EC about the European Company. Organisation of transnational training with elected trade unionists from 4 countries, namely Greece, Turkey, Boulgaria and Romania put the following problems: first, how to retain the attention of persons, a number of which are not accustomed with training and second how to involve actively trade-unionists with legal concepts included in the Directives.

Good practice: (Measures, instruments, criteria, indicators)

In order to resolve these problems, in the design of the training there were made two decisions. First to have very short powerpoint presentations and to develop 6 brief role-playing games simulating respective transnational situations a European Works Council has to deal with (e.g. reduction of workers. closing of a factory in a country, merging with another multinational group etc.). During implementation of training, presentations were made to all participants and then the trade-unionists split into 4 round tables. Each round table had 5 participants. On each table there was the text of the Directives and the national transposition laws. Each table had to play three role play games. A facilitator was in charge of two round tables. At the end of the role play games, there was discussion of the results, comparison of how different round tables had dealt with the same situation and what solution they had decided and the trainer underlined main things to pay attention to.

Problems and constraints encountered and solutions found:

An additional problem envisaged was that of the language communication. One round table had trade-unionists that did not speak any other language but Greek. In a second round table, there were 2 greek trade-unionists that spoke English but were not sure about their mastering of the language, a trade unionist form Cyprus with excellent command of English, who acted as an interpretor if the others needed a clarification, a Boulgarian and a Romanian trade-unionists who spoke very good English. The other two round tables were mixed and English was used for communication. On the tables though, the role play games were both in English and in Greek and the Direcives and transposition laws in all languages involved. During discussions and plennary sessions there was simultaneous interpretation facility.

Good Practice Category