A proven experiment in partnership

The labour science Institute (IST) has carved out an area of competence for itself and has achieved recognition in the external economic, political and social spheres (employer, union and political players) as well as in the academic field (well established collaboration with other Belgian universities - ULB, KUL). For example, this has manifested itself through the obtaining of the Francqui Chair in the capacity of foreigners, in 1997, in partnership with ULB.

Since 1993, IST has intiated and promote the training in labour studies at european level through a common programm with 11 other universities, among the most representative in this field of research.

Since 1997, the IST has been co-ordinating a comparative research programme centred on the study of the different aspects of industrial relations systems, on behalf of the Directorate-General for Employment and Social Affairs of the European Commission. This project has three main pillars :

• The institutional framework and the collective bargaining process ; 
• Trends in collective bargaining on employment ;
• Institutional representativeness of employers' and employees'organisations in Europe (at inter-professional level and at sector level).

In the framework of this project, IST has collaborated with a network of 15 national research centres in the field of employment and industrial relations policy

Since 2003, IST has been co-ordinating two studies for the Directorate-General for Employment and Social Affairs of the European Commission : one is a study on the representativeness of the social partners and the state of the social dialogue in the 15 member countries of the European Union, and the other is a study based on monographs on the situation of the social partners in the new member countries of the Union and in three candidate countries. To this end, a network of 28 university experts was set up.

In 2002, IST reinforced its role as a promoter of partnerships when the Max Bastin chair was created.