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1. This year conference “Social dialogue in a time of a societal transformation” deals with a topic very close to the interests of Marco Biagi.
Marco not only dedicated to it important studies which are still worth reading. He contributed to organise and to promote social dialogue during the years in which he was consultant to the European Commission, and then in Italy when he gave his precious advice to the ministry of employment.
The decision of the Fondazione Biagi to select this topic is very timely for quite good reasons.
One: social dialogue is a fundamental institution of collective labour relations as they are practiced in many developed countries. It is an essential part of the social model since it aims at promoting and improving by consensus the decision-making process in socio-economic affairs at different levels, international national and local.
As such it has been endorsed by many documents of the governing bodies of the ILO (beginning with the Decent Work Agenda) and of the European Union (lately by the Council recommendation on strengthening social dialogue of August 2023).
Two: the actual practice of social dialogue, after decades of expansion, is meeting with growing obstacles which may anticipate a decline.