Regulating digital work: from laisser-faire to fairness
The proposal for an EU directive on platform work about to emerge is welcome, yet insufficient—and no substitute for national action.
Economy
Analysis and debate on the European economy: growth and investment, fiscal and monetary policy, trade, industry and inequality.
The ‘freedom’ to work for nothing
Valeria Pulignano and Agnieszka Piasna
Irregular pay is one of the criticisms levelled at platform companies. But some of the time there is no pay at all.
Monitoring of workers’ personal data via entrance control systems
Preventing 1984-style monitoring of workers requires a rebalancing of workplace power, based on legal regulation and human dignity.
Structural solutions for structural inequalities—a trade union perspective
Luca Visentini, Nicola Countouris and Philippe Pochet
Responses to the pandemic have upended the idea that ‘there is no alternative’ to macroeconomic policies engendering widening inequality.
Reimagining care
Many regard caring for the Earth and others as a means to an end. Everything changes if we view care as an essential set of relationships.
Reversing the procurement race to the bottom
Oliver Roethig and Stan De Spiegelaere
Companies must be denied contracts if they refuse to respect workers’ rights.
Raising the resources to open the European sluice-gates
The growing challenges facing Europe, beyond recovery from the pandemic, require a budget to match.
More ambitious European minimum-wages directive demanded
Torsten Müller and Thorsten Schulten
The European Parliament has upped the ante, beyond a European Commission proposal, on a minimum-wages directive.
The twin original sins of fiscal Europe
With the post-Maastricht fiscal rules in abeyance due to the pandemic, it’s time to address their fundamental flaws.
Globalisation, telemigrants and working conditions
The globalisation of service work may not bring the major job losses feared—but it could weaken workers’ power significantly.
Tax abuse—it’s costing the earth
The world’s health workforce could be vaccinated in 36 hours if the pandemic of tax abuse were ended.
The feminist building-blocks of a just, sustainable economy
Jayati Ghosh finds in a UN Women report a blueprint for an economy which serves the public—rather than the other way around.
Aiming for a revolution in world trade
In the neoliberal era, global trade deals have come at the expense of workers. That can and must be reversed.
Artificial intelligence and workers’ rights
Valerio De Stefano and Antonio Aloisi
A draft EU regulation on artificial intelligence risks exclusion of the social partners and lack of compliance with data-protection requirements.
If young people ‘are the future’, that needs to start now
Kristof Becker, Tea Jarc and Joscha Wagner
Next year has been designated ‘European Year of Youth’. The Conference on the Future of Europe must hold out a real prospect for young people.
An unorthodox solution for Europe’s electricity crisis
National schemes sparing consumers the worst impact of soaring prices are no substitute for the EU redefining electricity as a public good.