About Esther Lynch

Esther Lynch was elected as ETUC Confederal Secretary at the Paris Congress in 2015. She has extensive experience of the trade union movement both in Ireland and at European and international level. Before joining the ETUC, she was the legislation and social affairs officer of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU).

Tackling insecure work in Europe—a critical moment

by Esther Lynch on 16th January 2019

The good news is that employment in the EU is at a record high. The bad news is that so much of it is insecure work—and a directive currently in train needs to be tough enough to fix that. Europe has a growing crisis of insecure work. Just before Christmas, the European Commission triumphantly announced that […]

Trade Unions On Frontline In Battle Against Inequality

by Esther Lynch on 21st December 2017

The European Commission continues to talk about robust recovery, but with wages falling or stagnating, many people in Europe are worse off than they were a decade ago. The European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions has recently reported that more than half the population in 11 EU Member States has difficulty […]

If Europe Takes Trade Union Rights For Granted… We Risk Losing Them

by Esther Lynch on 9th May 2016

Why, in 2016, has the European Trade Union Confederation found it necessary to start ringing alarm bells in defence of basic trade union rights in the EU? The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, agreed in 1948 as a reaction to the horrors of the Second World War, states: “Everyone has the right to form and […]

Webinar: Flexible working in the digital age - Is everyone a winner?

On 13 June 2019 from 15.00 – 16.30 CET, Eurofound will host a webinar about its latest research findings on the growing number of ICT-based mobile workers, or workers who are not tied to a particular work location as they use a tablet, laptop or phone to connect the company network via Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). By registering for this webinar, attendees will be able to take part in the live Q&A session and send in questions and reactions via the live chat.

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Zygmunt Bauman was a towering intellectual who saw and analysed – right up to his death in early 2017 – the great socio-political changes, often convulsive, in modern western society long before his peers. Here we highlight his prescient insights into what he dubbed ‘liquid modernity’ with 24 chapters on topics ranging from online loneliness via precarity/poverty/inequality to migration, fear of the ‘Other’ and the decline of the nation state. Chronicle of Crisis, 2011-16, written by one of the great chroniclers of our times, will be read and re-read for decades and more to come.

Time for substantial minimum wage rises and a European minimum wage policy

Minimum wages in most European Union (EU) countries were increased at the start of 2019, with an median increase of 4.8 % compared with the previous year, continuing the recent trends towards faster minimum wage growth. Much of this is accounted for by substantial increases in Eastern Europe together with efforts to undertake permanent and structural increases in minimum wage levels in countries such as Spain. There is also a growing debate over the role of minimum wages for the concept of Social Europe, which is expected to play a significant role in the 2019 European Parliament elections. In this context, the German government has indicated that one of its priorities during its EU Council Presidency in the second half of 2020 will be elaborating a framework for a European minimum wage policy.

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A New Analytical Approach Towards Sustainable Development

Co-sponsored by the S&D through its Progressive Society Initiative, the Independent Annual Sustainable Economy Survey is an alternative vision of the Commission's Annual Growth Survey. In addition to its usual in-depth analyses of economic and social developments in Europe, the new iASES broadens its scope and addresses environmental sustainability. To this end, it provides the first ever evaluation of Europe's ‘climate debt’, i.e. a computation of the investments needed for EU Member States to achieve the climate targets set out in the COP 21 agreement.

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‘Algorithm breakers’ are not a different ‘species’: attitudes towards trade unions of Deliveroo riders in Belgium

This working paper investigates a rare case of platform work performed in the realm of regulated employment and explores the attitudes of platform workers towards collective representation. Using a case study of Deliveroo, a food delivery platform, the paper argues that platform workers are not essentially different to their peers in their attitudes towards trade unions. The paper finds that the riders do not generally hold negative views towards unions, and do not consider unions incompatible with platform work. Instead, there has been a lack of union activity in reaching out to riders as a reason for their non-membership.

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