In the field of
social protection, paritarian institutions are non-profit institutions which are jointly managed by the
social partners {{cleanup-rewrite, article, date=June 2014
Social partners are groups that cooperate in working relationships to achieve a mutually agreed-upon goal, typically for the benefit of all involved groups. Examples of social partners include employers, em ...
(representatives of the employers and employees). In other words, the governance of these institutions is based on the equal representation of employees (normally the
trade unions) and employers in their governing bodies.
The social protection funds managed by the paritarian institutions are set up through
collective agreements
A collective agreement, collective labour agreement (CLA) or collective bargaining agreement (CBA) is a written contract negotiated through collective bargaining for employees by one or more trade unions with the management of a company (or with an ...
at the company, the industry-wide (such as construction sector, metal sector, etc.) or the inter-sectoral level, and they can provide several
social benefits such as
pension
A pension (, from Latin ''pensiō'', "payment") is a fund into which a sum of money is added during an employee's employment years and from which payments are drawn to support the person's retirement from work in the form of periodic payments ...
(in particular occupational pension funds), health care, unemployment, disability, paid holidays, and other such benefits.
Within the paritarian model there are two phases: in the negotiation phase, when a collective agreement between the trade unions and the employers’ representatives set up the social fund; and in the management phase, the signatory parties decide to manage their negotiated social funds themselves by establishing a Paritarian Institution in which they are equally represented.
Paritarian Institutions of Social Protection are widespread in Europe, especially in Western Europe and Scandinavia. The combined funds currently managed by the Paritarian Institutions of Social Protection total to a rough estimate of 1.3 trillion euro in assets and cover about 80 million European citizens.
In 1996, a European Organization the European Association of Paritarian Institutions of Social Protection (AEIP) was created in order to represent the Paritarian Institutions to the European Union. AEIP underlines the specific peculiarities of the Paritarian Institutions compared to other similar actors like private insurance companies or
mutual organizations.
Even though of European origins, paritarian institutions also exist in other parts of the world like in North America, South America, India, and Japan.
Paritarian governance is also found in some
employee trusts.
Etymology
''Paritarian'' (from the French "paritaire"; "paritair" in Dutch, "paritätische" in German, "Paritetico" in Italian) means jointly managed on an equal basis (
parity
Parity may refer to:
* Parity (computing)
** Parity bit in computing, sets the parity of data for the purpose of error detection
** Parity flag in computing, indicates if the number of set bits is odd or even in the binary representation of the r ...
basis).
References
{{Reflist
External links
OECD Guidelines for Pension Fund Governance, 5 June 2009Pension Fund Governance: Challenges and Potential Solutions, June 2008
Social systems