Hits and misses of EU workplace and jobs legislation

EUobserver talked to Dutch MEP Agnes Jongerius, Socialists & Democrats (S&D) spokesperson for employment, to take a look at previous and future challenges of the Parliament’s work from the social and labour views.

Here is the overview forward of the 2024 EU elections.

From the employment perspective, what have been the best successes over this mandate?

Agnes Jongerius: I believe when you look again on the first speech of Ursula von der Leyen, when she needed to develop into the EU Fee’s president, you possibly can see various our election manifesto and of the marketing campaign of Frans Timmermans. She was speaking about equal pay for women and men. She promised within the speech that within the first 100 days, the proposal round transparency can be on the desk. It took a bit longer. However it’s completed, and now it is as much as the member states to transpose it to nationwide laws.

Von der Leyen talked about ladies, that they need to even be represented at board stage, and that she would personally attempt to unblock the directive. That was additionally one of many calls for of our political household, and he or she constructed her speech round that.

She additionally talked about the truth that too many employees within the European Union had issues paying their payments on the finish of the month. She was speaking about in-work poverty, a phenomenon that we knew, in fact, from the US. Frans had additionally been campaigning round that, and it led to the minimal wage directive.

Von der Leyen additionally talked about the truth that too many employees are unprotected, like the employees of the Huge Tech platforms. So when you have a look at the speech, and also you see numerous similarities with our election manifesto and Timmermans’ marketing campaign, I believe you possibly can say that we have been energetic and pushing.

And probably the most complicated legislative information?

The minimal wage was fairly tough. There have been lots of people who stated: “This isn’t a European competence, you shouldn’t be concerned on this”. On the time, the employers’ organisations threw numerous authorized opinions on the desk, so it was additionally, as an example, a battle of authorized opinions. Though in the long run we have been in a position to have a reasonably formidable directive on minimal wages and the way member states ought to assess their adequacy. I am fairly pleased with that.

After we discuss future challenges, if you wish to have a correct authorized textual content earlier than the elections, the vote must be within the first week of February. It may be later, however you then’ll should vote on a preliminary textual content, then the authorized scrubbing will happen over the summer season months, after which the brand new parliament should vote on a ‘corrigendum’. So we’ve got 4 months, kind of, to get numerous laws accomplished.

And I believe that the platform directive is probably the most difficult one. Additionally, as a result of the parliament and Council have fairly completely different level of views, and there’s a large quantity of lobbying happening. Final week within the employment committee, Dragos Pislaru [Renew Europe], the chair of the committee, stated that if solely the platforms would use the cash they’re now utilizing to promote and foyer to correct pay their employees, that will actually make a distinction.

However, I believe it is also difficult and essential to achieve an settlement as a result of now we will see how many individuals are working for Uber, or how many individuals are working for Bolt, however how huge is that this group of individuals?

If folks in probably the most susceptible components of the labour market see their managers saying you do not work for me, you get your service by way of an IT platform, for instance within the retail sector, and persons are supplied to work in a store for a selected day and a selected time period, and that is sufficient for an employer to not deal with them as a employee and to not provide them social safety, a collective settlement and so forth. Then within the cleansing sector, within the elderly-care sector, they might all say let’s use an app. If that’s sufficient for folks to lose their primary employees’ rights, then we actually have a really huge drawback within the labour market. So it is essential that we’re in a position to end this file.

Is there any essential piece of laws that would lose political momentum if not handed earlier than the EU elections? Other than the platform employees directive.

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Final mandate, we weren’t in a position to end the [modernisation of the] coordination of social safety methods. Simply earlier than the [2019] elections, we had the parliament’s place, trilogues had already began, after which in the long run I believe the council did not agree with the proposal from the trilogues. Since then, my colleague Gabriele Bischoff have talked to each presidency to restart conversations, and end this file.

I need to say I actually admire her as a result of she nonetheless hasn’t given up. So it might be effort upset if it wasn’t completed earlier than this mandate, though it is sophisticated.

And I do not know whether or not we’re shedding momentum or not, however from an employment viewpoint, we’ve got a pores and skin within the sport of financial governance. As a result of the scope for social coverage, the scope for social funding, the scope for making the European Pillar of Social Rights a actuality can also be outlined by how strict the principles are for governments from the proposal of financial governance.

Within the work programme for 2024, the fee promised a revision of the European Works Council, and in a earlier work programme additionally they introduced the standard traineeships. And so they will not be completed on this mandate, though I believe it is essential to place them on the desk and to start out engaged on them.

As for the incapacity card, I don’t assume we have to lose any political momentum. We’re planning to finalise it even perhaps through the Spanish presidency (to December 2023), however in any other case on the newest through the Belgian presidency (from January 2024).

And taking a look into the long run, what must be accomplished within the subsequent parliamentary cycle?

There may be an overflow from this mandate to the subsequent. As I stated, the European Works Council file is not going to be completed. High quality traineeships is not going to be completed. And I hope that financial governance and the Platform Staff directive will probably be completed.

Nevertheless, once I have a look at the subsequent mandate, AI at work is certainly a difficulty that I hope we will tackle. I do not assume we have seen something but, so we actually want to make use of all of the clear heads round this subject to see what’s coming.

I additionally hope that we’ll proceed to push for, as an example, the work across the European Pillar of Social Rights — for instance on minimal earnings and poverty, as a result of there’s a goal round poverty that’s not but inside attain.

At the least I’d argue that we also needs to tackle board Pillar 20, which is about accessible public companies, particularly as we’ve got seen that in too many Member States reasonably priced housing is a very huge drawback, particularly for younger folks. I purchased my first home 30 years in the past, so no person ought to really feel sorry for me. But when you need to get on the housing market now, it is rather tough. Inexpensive housing will probably be a part of our marketing campaign and we must always see how we will use European insurance policies for reasonably priced housing.

Other than that, I believe one other essential subject will probably be how we will use public cash to push for respectable and sustainable jobs. For instance, how can we alter the general public procurement directive to assist these nations that need to allocate public cash to good and sustainable jobs?

There may be a lot cash floating round. In the event you actually use these conditionalities, you possibly can push for it.