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Late retirement: possible for many, not for allSociety

Late retirement: possible for many, not for all

Kati Kuitto

Finland was quick to respond to demographic ageing. What lessons can be learnt from its pension reforms?

Feminist governance—here to stay, or gone tomorrow?Politics

Feminist governance—here to stay, or gone tomorrow?

Marian Sawer

Since 1975 feminists have helped establish new international frameworks. Success inadvertently sowed the seeds of populist campaigns.

Environmental policy: avoiding a social backlashEcology

Environmental policy: avoiding a social backlash

Elizabeth Dirth and Christiny Miller

The Netherlands has become the latest country to face a public backlash to environmental policy.

The promise and peril of generative AISociety

The promise and peril of generative AI

Diane Coyle

To ensure tools such as ChatGPT deliver widely shared benefits, we must learn from the last wave of digital innovation.

Strengthening democracy at workEconomy

Strengthening democracy at work

Marcus Meyer

The European Commission has just initiated consultation on more effective European Works Councils legislation.

E-fuels: a synthetic solution to the real problemEcology

E-fuels: a synthetic solution to the real problem

Béla Galgóczi

The European Union’s compromise on e-fuels opens the back door to an afterlife for the combustion engine.

The failure of Credit Suisse—not just a one-offEconomy

The failure of Credit Suisse—not just a one-off

Peter Bofinger

The bank was mismanaged but its collapse, Peter Bofinger writes, reveals a system of regulation with as many holes as a Swiss cheese.

After Michel exits, enter Marin?Politics

After Michel exits, enter Marin?

Rodrigo Vaz

Sanna Marin is the right person to preside over the European Council. But would she want to?

Ukraine’s relationship with the Belarusian oppositionPolitics

Ukraine’s relationship with the Belarusian opposition

Margaryta Khvostova, Dmytro Kryvosheiev and Pavel Slunkin

As an ally to both, the European Union can facilitate their mutual understanding and engagement.

Tackling staff shortages in health and social careSociety

Tackling staff shortages in health and social care

Adam Rogalewski

On World Health Day, lessons learned from workers’ expressions of discontent must be translated into action.

Cinderella no more: mental health mattersSociety

Cinderella no more: mental health matters

Gerry Mitchell and Shana Cohen

It’s time to move mental health to the top of the European Union policy agenda.

Geniuses and ‘mad’ women: culture as mental cauteriserSociety

Geniuses and ‘mad’ women: culture as mental cauteriser

Cristina Lago Godefroid

Women are at the heart of the epidemic of mental ill-health—as healers as well as victims.

For a just and democratic climate transitionPolitics

For a just and democratic climate transition

Julia Cagé, Lucas Chancel, Anne-Laure Delatte and 8 more

The scale of the crises Europe faces requires not only a raising of the policy stakes but a restructuring of its governance.

How platform workers show solidarity and organiseSociety

How platform workers show solidarity and organise

Sarrah Kassem

As the economic and political power of platforms soars, platform workers represent an emergent labour movement.

Wanted: Vladimir PutinPolitics

Wanted: Vladimir Putin

Antara Haldar

Whether Russia’s president ever ends up in handcuffs, the International Criminal Court’s indictment is a big step in the right direction.

Professional sovereignty for Europe‘s youthSociety

Professional sovereignty for Europe‘s youth

Günther Schmid, Janine Leschke, Bernard Gazier and 1 more

Transitions from school to work must be improved for individual youngsters. Switzerland shows the way.

The good man from TraiskirchenPolitics

The good man from Traiskirchen

Robert Misik

The Austrian social democrats are heading into a leadership contest, Robert Misik writes. For the SPÖ it could get bumpy.

Stress at work: countering Europe’s new pandemicEconomy

Stress at work: countering Europe’s new pandemic

Claes-Mikael Ståhl

Occupational stress has become endemic. It damages workers, their families, businesses and economies.

Winning in Ukraine, losing the global south?Politics

Winning in Ukraine, losing the global south?

Werner Raza

The west’s focus on the war in Ukraine risks a geopolitically counterproductive neglect of the urgent problems of the global south.

ILO advertisement

Global Wage Report 2022-23: The impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power

The International Labour Organization's Global Wage Report is a key reference on wages and wage inequality for the academic community and policy-makers around the world.

This eighth edition of the report, The Impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power, examines the evolution of real wages, giving a unique picture of wage trends globally and by region. The report includes evidence on how wages have evolved through the COVID-19 crisis as well as how the current inflationary context is biting into real wage growth in most regions of the world. The report shows that for the first time in the 21st century real wage growth has fallen to negative values while, at the same time, the gap between real productivity growth and real wage growth continues to widen.

The report analysis the evolution of the real total wage bill from 2019 to 2022 to show how its different components—employment, nominal wages and inflation—have changed during the COVID-19 crisis and, more recently, during the cost-of-living crisis. The decomposition of the total wage bill, and its evolution, is shown for all wage employees and distinguishes between women and men. The report also looks at changes in wage inequality and the gender pay gap to reveal how COVID-19 may have contributed to increasing income inequality in different regions of the world. Together, the empirical evidence in the report becomes the backbone of a policy discussion that could play a key role in a human-centred recovery from the different ongoing crises.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ETUI advertisement

The four transitions and the missing one

Europe is at a crossroads, painfully navigating four transitions (green, digital, economic and geopolitical) at once but missing the transformative and ambitious social transition it needs. In other words, if the EU is to withstand the storm, we do not have the luxury of abstaining from reflecting on its social foundations, of which intermittent democratic discontent is only one expression. It is against this background that the ETUI/ETUC publishes its annual flagship publication Benchmarking Working Europe 2023, with the support of more than 70 graphs and a special contribution from two guest editors, Professors Kalypso Nikolaidïs and Albena Azmanova.


DOWNLOAD HERE

Eurofound advertisement

#AskTheExpert webinar—Key ingredients for the future of work: job quality and gender equality

Eurofound’s head of information and communication, Mary McCaughey, its senior research manager, Agnès Parent-Thirion, and research manager, Jorge Cabrita, explore the findings from the recently published European Working Conditions Telephone Survey (EWCTS) in an #AskTheExpert webinar. This survey of more than 70,000 workers in 36 European countries provides a wide-ranging picture of job quality across countries, occupations, sectors and age groups and by gender in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. It confirms persistent gender segregation in sectors, occupations and workplaces, indicating that we are a long way from the goals of equal opportunities for women and men at work and equal access to key decision-making positions in the workplace.


WATCH HERE

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

Let’s end involuntary unemployment!

What is the best way to fight unemployment? We want to know your opinion, to understand better the potential of an EU-wide permanent programme for direct and guaranteed public-service employment.

In collaboration with Our Global Moment, Fondazione Pietro Nenni and other progressive organisations across Europe, we launched an EU-wide survey on the perception of unemployment and publicly funded jobs, exploring ways to bring innovation in public sector-led job creation.


TAKE THE SURVEY HERE

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

The macroeconomic effects of re-applying the EU fiscal rules

Against the background of the European Commission's reform plans for the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), this policy brief uses the macroeconometric multi-country model NiGEM to simulate the macroeconomic implications of the most relevant reform options from 2024 onwards. Next to a return to the existing and unreformed rules, the most prominent options include an expenditure rule linked to a debt anchor.

Our results for the euro area and its four biggest economies—France, Italy, Germany and Spain—indicate that returning to the rules of the SGP would lead to severe cuts in public spending, particularly if the SGP rules were interpreted as in the past. A more flexible interpretation would only somewhat ease the fiscal-adjustment burden. An expenditure rule along the lines of the European Fiscal Board would, however, not necessarily alleviate that burden in and of itself.

Our simulations show great care must be taken to specify the expenditure rule, such that fiscal consolidation is achieved in a growth-friendly way. Raising the debt ceiling to 90 per cent of gross domestic product and applying less demanding fiscal adjustments, as proposed by the IMK, would go a long way.


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