1) The idea of the webinar was to involve the social partners, policy makers, academics, representatives from the NGO sector in an open discussion with expert on industrial relations from old Member States of the EU, such as Germany. The participants had opportunity to listen to the lecture by Mr. Matthias Schäfer, expert in the field of social policy, public finances and labour market policies, who is currently the head of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation’s Economic Department.

During the webinar Mr. Schäfer spoke about the German experience regarding the new forms of employment, mini jobs and the volume of gig economy in his country and presented various results from surveys regarding the percentage of people employed in non-standard employment relationship. Through this activity, our goal was to raise awareness of the impact of new forms of employment in developed economies and how they contribute to increasing overall employment as well as the inclusion of inactive workforce in the labor market.

2) Taking into account the main obstacles/challenges faced by the social partners from Macedonia, the Center for Research and Policy Making organized a half-day training for representatives of trade unions and employers’ organizations. The training was conducted within the framework of the project: “The adaptation of industrial relations towards new forms of work”, financed by the European Union.

The focus of the training was on increasing the capacities of the social partners to adapt to the new conditions on the labor market, i.e. how to respond with adequate support for their members, in order to provide better social protection for the workers and greater inclusion of the workforce labor market. In addition, the lecturers presented positive practices for improving and promoting the tripartite dialogue. The participants also had the opportunity to discuss and exchange information, ideas and perceptions in order to create a better legal framework that would provide social protection, safety at work and care for the health of workers, as well as the quality of jobs created with development of technology.

Professor Andon Majhoshev, an expert in the field of industrial relations, collective bargaining, modern syndicalism and mediation, had his presentation in the first part of the training. He spoke on the topic: “Social (tripartite and bipartite) dialogue or social monologue: the challenge of the social partners”.

In the second part of the training, the researcher Kristijan Trajkovski presented the the results from the research conducted within the project to the participants. At the same time, he made recommendations for improving the legal framework i.e. how the labour law should be designed in order to respond to the needs of workers and employers from the country.