About

6th UNI Europa Conference
BELFAST • 25-27 March 2025

#RealSayMorePay
Around 1,000 union leaders from across Europe will gather to build a stronger labour movement and set UNI Europa’s course for the next four years.

"At a time of record profits for employers and the rise of the far right, it couldn’t be more important for our European trade union movement to come together in Belfast. United, we will move forward through collective bargaining to win real say and more pay for workers."

– Oliver Roethig
UNI Europa Regional Secretary

From 25-27 March 2025, over 1,000 trade union leaders from 50 countries will meet in Belfast for the 6th 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 four 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 25th 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.

“Europe’s services workers are the backbone of economic and social life in Europe. They deserve to be treated as such. At our Belfast Conference, we will make a concrete plan to increase collective bargaining coverage across our sectors.”

– Peter Hellberg, UNI Europa President

“In Belfast, our European federation will celebrate its 25th anniversary – and look ahead to another quarter century of fighting for better pay and conditions for services workers across Europe.”

– Pilar Rato, UNI Europa 1st Vice President