This website is the result of a project undertaken by FIEC (European Construction Industry Federation) and the EFBWW (the European Federation of Building and Wood Workers), the EU sectoral social partners for the construction industry, with the financial support of the European Commission (DG EMPL).
- FIEC represents via its 33 national Member Federations in 29 countries (25 EU, Norway, Switzerland, Ukraine and Turkey) construction enterprises of all sizes, i.e. small and medium-sized enterprises as well as "global players”, carrying out all forms of building and civil engineering activities.
- The EFBWW is the European organisation representing the workers of the construction industry, the building materials industry, the wood and furniture industry and the forestry industry. The EFBWW has 72 affiliated unions in 33 countries and represents a total of 2,350,000 members. The EFBWW is a member organisation of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC).
Why did we decide to launch this website ?
The crisis which has hit the EU since 2008 has had and is still having a significant impact on the levels of unemployment of most of the Member States and is particularly affecting young people : one in five under 25 years old who is looking for work cannot find a job. 7.5 million young people between 15 an 24 are neither working, nor in education or training.
In addition, in several member States the construction industry is still suffering from a negative image which affects its attractiveness and which, to some extent, explains the difficulties in hiring and in keeping young people as well as skilled workers.
At the same time, the demographic changes, and in particular the ageing of the population, are putting additional pressure both on companies, who have difficulties in hiring young workers, as well as on the workers in place.
Finally, improving the attractiveness of the construction industry, which in 2013 represented 8,8% of the EU28 GDP and which remains a labour intensive activity, towards young people can provide an important contribution in fighting against the extremely high levels of youth unemployment that the EU is facing nowadays.
A focus on these topics is therefore a priority for FIEC and the EFBWW and for our joint social dialogue agenda.
The specific objective of this project is therefore to develop a joint FIEC-EFBWW website, in order to present national best practices concerning tools/initiatives in favour of youth employment and for improving their working conditions in the construction industry.
We are convinced that the exchange of best practices on initiatives for promoting youth employment and improving working conditions can provide an extremely useful input for the setting up and the development of targeted new initiatives, by showing how other stakeholders in other countries have addressed the same concerns.