Presentation of the Institute for the Promotion of Employees

Important Notice

Here a presentation of the AFI-IPL-Institute for the promotion of employees- and an overview of its main activities is given in English. If you would like to have more detailed information or to access our publications we invite you to visit the GERMAN or ITALIAN section.

The AFI-IPL – Institute for the Promotion of Employees – is a public entity dedicated to labour market research, information, training and consultancy, all about the subject labour. The institute is located in the city of Bolzano/Bozen in the Autonomous Province of South Tyrol/Alto Adige. It was founded in 1992 and is under supervision of the provincial government. The governing bodies are composed of members of the local trade unions, members of the local social associations as well as representatives of the local government administration. The institute receives its funds mainly from the provincial government but also from European institutions. The AFI-IPL is certified with EN ISO 9001:2008.

The institute has a committed team of internal and external collaborators, among them economists, jurists, political scientists, sociologists and psychologists. The AFI-IPL team is sometimes assisted by student apprentices and trainees.

Work is much more than a good exchanged on a market. Work embraces all spheres of human life, starting from being a means to secure one’s existence to being a way of self-actualisation. That is our philosophy. Against the background of the far-reaching changes that are zaking place in the working world, employees and their representatives are more than ever in need of a research institution that focuses on their interests.
We improve the professional, economic and social conditions of employees by means of information, training and consultancy. Thus, we collaborate with the social associations and trade unions present in our region, we support them without challenging their autonomy regarding collective agreements and collective bargaining. We have some main fields of activity, research is the most important one. It claims a lot of resources. The aim to get to know more about the working and living conditions of South Tyrolean employees is the starting point for any research. Since the working environment can have strong influence on the worker’s life, factor as the conditions of employment, ‘quality’ of the working environment and the possible effects should not be underestimated. The AFI-IPL focuses on research in this field.
In principle the AFI-IPL’s research projects treat the following thematic fields:

• Income distribution and decentralized bargaining
• Labour market and human resources
• Gender and social benefits
• Territorial development and social dialogue

If you would like to inform yourself about the present and past projects please visit the German or Italian section.

The AFI-IPL issues different kinds of publications which are generally bilingual (Italian and German). In addition to the printed publications our homepage provides the electronic version of research reports and materials. Those can be easily downloaded.

• The manuals are reference works that cover important aspects of the labour market
• In the series ‘documentations’ the results of the different research projects are published and the achievements of conferences and workshop activities are discussed.
• The newsletters are published monthly. They provide information about different highly topical issues concerning employment, income distribution, collective bargaining and social dialogue.
• The biannual magazine is called “Dimension Arbeit- Dimensione lavoro”. Important questions that are relevant for the present working world are examined. This magazine contains different contributions from external and internal researchers.
• The Gray series offer a number of unpublished research, working papers and reports about the thematic fields mentioned before.
• Our homepage - www.afi-ipl.org – gives you the possibility to download publications, informs you about the institute and its activities and, moreover, it features for example a forum about the world of work, where interesting facts and data are presented and can be discussed, or highly topical and relevant News. Boxes on the left bar lead you to thematic sections, one is ‘Women and work’.

Crucial elements of employment contracts are determined by the social partners in negotiations: working time, vocational training provided by the employer, productivity-oriented remuneration. Our training and consulting activities are addressed to representatives of trade unions to support them in negotiations and strengthen their bargaining power.

We offer:

• Balance sheets and productivity analysis
• Information about measures in the field of gender mainstreaming
• Consultancy in making a business-internal ‘Vocational Training Concept’
• Macroeconomic Analysis of the Labour Market

The vocational courses that we offer as formation opportunity to our partners, mainly to trade union representatives and officers, focus on three thematic fields:

• Representative participation on the corporate level
• Fundamentals concerning the recent developments in labour law and social law
• Communication skills and negotiation skills