Promoting Social Dialogue The project aims to assist the country in strengthening tripartite and bipartite social dialogue through institutional and legislative improvement along with activities aimed at strengthening the capacities of tripartite actors in the labour market to engage effectively in social dialogue. The ultimate goal is to improve the quality of industrial and employment relations so as to facilitate job rich economic recovery and secure decent working conditions in sustainable enterprises. The applied strategy takes a comprehensive and holistic approach and aims to provide support of institutions and participants in policy design and decision making both at national and local level. The development of functioning and effective tripartite and bipartite social dialogue institutions is necessary in order to provide inclusive participation of all the relevant stakeholders, especially of the social partners, in the creation, development and implementation of economic and social policies. The ILO applied successfuly a three steps strategy in Ukraine in 2011-2012 for improving collective bargaining: carried out an analysis of root causes for ineffective collective bargaing, facilitated intensive tripartite consultations throughout the process and lead tripartite validation for a set of ILO policy recommendations, organised an awareness raising campaing on the recommendations and provided technical assistance in the implementation of the recommendations. In addition, the social dialogue project “Consolidating the Legal and Institutional Foundations of Social Dialogue in the Western Balkan countries and Moldova funded by the Austrian Government is a closely linked to this proposal, since the ILO can build on the achievements such as revitalised National Economic and Social Council and build on the consolidated and trustful relationships with the constituents. The experiences and lessons learned from both projects will be applied in FYR Macedonia. A further enhancement of the tripartite social dialogue institution is expected to document and contribute to consensus based optimal political responses to the persistent economic and jobs crisis, which affects the country. Strengthening of social partnership at all levels targets the employers’ and workers’ associations as well as the Government as an employer in the public sector. It aims to develop a coordinated and effective machinery of collective bargaining supported by an operational mechanism of amicable settlement of labour disputes and a corps of specialized labour disputes conciliators and arbitrators. The right to collective bargaining is a fundamental right at work as in embedded in the ILO Conventions (C.98, C.151. and C.154.) Collective bargaining is a powerful and empowering tool enabling social partners to actively participate in labour market governance. Strong collective bargaining promotes fairness and consistency in shaping the labour market policies. While amicable settlement of labour disputes, especially at the times of crisis, facilitates mutually acceptable solutions to both workers and employers, mitigates financial and reputational risks of employers on the one had and mitigates risk of job loss and poor working conditions of workers.