From our Summer Days to a busy September | Editorial of SG Klaus Heeger

Dear members, partners and friends,

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With the energy of June still fresh - the CESI Summer Days and our CESI Youth Congress ushering in new leadership and ideas - we enter September determined to turn momentum into delivery.

We open our second half of the year in Strasbourg on Tuesday, 9 September, with an ‘eQualPro’ project event in the European Parliament on “European equality policies made in Brussels: What added value for France?” In the presence of high-level speakers, among them three European Parliament Committee chairs, this session will take stock of the EU’s equality acquis and the new Roadmap for Women’s Rights - and we will use it to connect policy to practice, helping workers’ representatives advance gender equality at work in the digital age.

That same afternoon, also in Strasbourg, we will shift focus from principles to protection. With a delegation comprising several expert speakers from among our trade union membership in the European Parliament Intergroup on Resilience, Disaster Management and Civil Protection, we will put firefighters’ working conditions and occupational health and safety under the spotlight.

Later in September we will bring the conversation to Brussels and to a sector that shapes Europe’s future every day: education. On Thursday, 25 September, we will host a European parliamentary breakfast hearing on “Honouring the Teaching Profession in Europe”.

Teachers’ unions from several countries will share the reality behind the headlines -shortages, workloads, careers that too often stall - and set out what it takes to make teaching attractive again: fair pay, professional autonomy and sustained investment. We will also look ahead to a Pilot on European School Alliances, mobility to cross-border cooperation in education, and innovative pedagogy.

The morning in the European Parliament will be followed by a working meeting of our statutory Expert Commission on Education, Training and Research at CESI’s premises, held in the framework of our EU co-funded PillACT project, to strengthen the implementation of the European Pillar of Social Rights in the area of education through real social-partner engagement.

These September meetings and events are only a few among many, but they are representative of how CESI works: we try to bring Europe closer to workers, and to translate principles into practice with our members.

From the Summer Days and the renewal brought by our CESI Youth Congress in June to a September dense with delivery, the message is consistent. Europe is at its best when institutions listen to practitioners and when unions have the tools to turn fine words into fair work.

That is what we will do this month - together with you.

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With kindest regards,
Klaus Heeger