About

From 25-27 March 2025, over 800 trade union leaders from 50 countries will meet in Belfast for the 6^th UNI Europa Conference.

Together, we will take on current societal challenges, tackle the most pressing issues facing workers, elect leadership and draw up an action plan for the coming five years.

Collective bargaining is the foundation of trade union work – and we will continue fighting to strengthen it. Since our last conference, employers have made enormous profits that have fuelled inflation while squeezing workers’ real-terms wages. Europe’s services workers deserve a raise – and collective bargaining is how we win it. That is why our Conference slogan is “Forward through Collective Bargaining – Real Say, More Pay”.

In a time when reactionary forces try to divide the working class, our trade unions stand shoulder-to-shoulder. Belfast is a city that embodies our unity across borders. The labour movement is the biggest civil society organisation on the island of Ireland, bringing together over 800,000 working people north and south of the border. Its history stretches back into the eighteenth century, when local societies were established in Irish cities to represent craftsman such as bricklayers, butchers and printers.

Today, with hundreds of member unions, UNI Europa unites seven million services workers from Portugal to Turkey, Finland to Italy. In Belfast, we will celebrate the 25^th anniversary of our federation: two and a half decades of collective bargaining, strategic organising, research, advocacy and public campaigns to win real say and more pay in the workplace, to build healthier communities and to strengthen democracy in European societies.