PHSDialogue - Building an EU Sectoral Social Dialogue and collective bargaining capacity in Personal and Household Services

2026-07-22

Based on previous cooperation on EU-funded projects, including the Advancing Personal and Household Services (Ad-PHS) Project, as well as several joint statements and declarations, the social partners in Personal and Household Services (PHS) - EFFE, EFFAT, EFSI and UNI Europa - will lay a foundation for a sustainable EU Sectoral Social Dialogue at EU-level and strengthen collective bargaining capacity at the Member State-level with this project. The central activities of the project include intelligence gathering on trade unions, employers' organisations, industry organisations and migrant worker organisations active in the PHS Sectors. This will allow EU Social Partners to become more representative. This will be complemented by a collective bargaining and social dialogue report and a PHS Employment Monitor, surveying workers across the PHS sectors. Two online working group meetings, two public workshops, and two plenary sessions during the course of the 24-month project will provide trade unions and employers at the Member-State level in the PHS sectors with the opportunity to discuss how the PHS sectors can ensure decent work and quality services. This attractive framework will be complemented by the establishment of four national sectoral observatories which will strengthen employers' and unions' ambitions to collectively bargain and set sectoral standards. In doing so, the social partners in PHS aim to feed into the European Care Strategy, contribute to the European Commission's goal of raising collective bargaining coverage across Member States, and meeting the social and employment challenges associated with the dominance of undeclared work and the rise of online platforms. By pioneering a new organisational model based on inclusivity and raising the representativeness of the Sectoral Social Dialogue's activities, the project actively contributes to the on-going European Commission's Review of the Sectoral Social Dialogue.

Belgium

2026-02-15