Social Europe

politics, economy and employment & labour

  • Themes
    • Strategic autonomy
    • War in Ukraine
    • European digital sphere
    • Recovery and resilience
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Dossiers
    • Occasional Papers
    • Research Essays
    • Brexit Paper Series
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Newsletter

Shaping The New World Of Work

Peter Scherrer 27th June 2016

Peter Scherrer

Peter Scherrer

It is called disruption. New digital technologies are having unforeseen impacts on industries and services in all directions. This fourth industrial revolution is testimony to the power of human ingenuity and innovation – and has the potential to bring major social benefits and challenges alike.

The impact on labour markets and workers has so far been largely unpredictable, unplanned, and by no means altogether positive. Digitalisation is generating a wide range of non-standard forms of work offering workers themselves low pay, little control and miserable working conditions.

It is unacceptable that people should be at the mercy of these rapid and sometimes unregulated changes. In the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) we believe that the EU, in full consultation with employers and workers – the social partners – should direct the future of digitalisation. It is not the technology itself but how it is used that matters. We want a say in shaping this new world of work.

Indeed, that is the title of a high-level, joint ETUC/European Trade Union Institute (ETUI) conference taking place in Brussels this week.

The ETUC has called for a permanent European Forum to involve trade unions, employers, educators and other relevant partners in outlining the future of digitalisation, including social aspects – a demand finally taken up in the recent European Commission Communication in the form of an annual stakeholder forum and twice-yearly roundtables.


Our job is keeping you informed!


Subscribe to our free newsletter and stay up to date with the latest Social Europe content. We will never send you spam and you can unsubscribe anytime.

Sign up here

Research shows that, if well regulated, digitalisation could open up new jobs, more flexible working arrangements and fresh forms of worker cooperation. It could free people from dangerous, dirty and monotonous tasks. But if not, huge numbers of medium-skilled jobs could disappear, leaving workers with precarious contracts, on call 24/7 and under constant surveillance, while increasing inequalities and undermining solidarity and trade union organisation.

1

Source: Christophe Degryse (ETUI 2016)

For example, an increasing number of workers are joining – either through choice or more often necessity – the so-called on-demand economy. Online platforms recruit freelance ‘contractors’ and supply them to companies as and when needed. Already, more than 2000 such crowdsourcing platforms exist. According to a study by the International Labour Organization (ILO), individual crowdworkers tend to be isolated, insecure, low-paid, have little autonomy and no way of enforcing their rights. Digital technology enables crowdsourcing to disregard national borders and platforms avoid legal responsibilities by claiming to be mere intermediaries between workers and companies. So EU intervention is needed to recognise and regulate platforms as employers, wherever they are based. Fair competition requires that they take responsibility in areas like career development, pensions, social security and corporate tax payments.

Crowdworkers must not be denied equal rights, including freedom of association and collective bargaining. They must be able to organise together. Trade unions and other activists are already developing tools to enable workers to share information or identify bad employers, such as Turkopticon and IG Metall’s FairCrowdWork site. Trade unions in a number of EU countries have contributed to influential assessments of the impact of digitalisation on working life, such as the 2015 Mettling Report for the French Labour Ministry.

Unless fair standards are imposed from the outset, the exploding digital economy will provoke a downward spiral in working conditions, increasing the gap between ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ in society. The ETUC is demanding that digital workers should be covered by all EU and national labour legislation and collective agreements relating to working conditions and wages, with provisions for social protection, skills training – especially for women to rebalance the gender digital divide –, environmental standards, and full information and consultation with trade union representatives when changes are in the offing.

Digitalisation is a major challenge for workers, trade unions, and society in general, and cannot simply be left under the control of market forces: the law of the jungle and winner takes all. EU, national and regional authorities, employers and unions all have a part to play in shaping the use of new technologies for the general good.

The European Commission has been slow to take up this challenge, and the ETUC is concerned that a number of important questions are missing from the Communication.

  • New opportunities for monitoring and surveillance by employers raise concerns about workers’ privacy and data protection, which need to be covered by legislation.
  • Workers must have the ‘right to disconnect’, to protect the balance between work and family life.
  • According to the Commission’s own figures, 41% of the EU workforce have few if any digital skills. In the future, these skills will be key to employment, and workers will need career-long training and upgrading. This is important above all for women. There are twice as many male as female graduates in science, technology and mathematics. Europe must not exclude half the population from the digital economy.

2


We need your support


Social Europe is an independent publisher and we believe in freely available content. For this model to be sustainable, however, we depend on the solidarity of our readers. Become a Social Europe member for less than 5 Euro per month and help us produce more articles, podcasts and videos. Thank you very much for your support!

Become a Social Europe Member

  • In the same way, universal access to online services and e-government must be guaranteed, to avoid trapping especially the older generation in digital isolation.
  • Intellectual property rights for creative workers must be protected.

Trade unions have an important role to play especially in organising self-employed workers, and supporting workers’ representatives and works councils in helping to shape digitalisation in their workplaces.

In the end, digital work should contribute to better working conditions, better pay, and safer, greener workplaces. A new legal framework may be necessary to achieve this and to make sure that Europe’s new world of work offers an inclusive vision for all workers.

Peter Scherrer

Peter Scherrer is deputy general secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation, Brussels.

You are here: Home / Politics / Shaping The New World Of Work

Most Popular Posts

Russian soldiers' mothers,war,Ukraine The Ukraine war and Russian soldiers’ mothersJennifer Mathers and Natasha Danilova
IGU,documents,International Gas Union,lobby,lobbying,sustainable finance taxonomy,green gas,EU,COP ‘Gaslighting’ Europe on fossil fuelsFaye Holder
Schengen,Fortress Europe,Romania,Bulgaria Romania and Bulgaria stuck in EU’s second tierMagdalena Ulceluse
income inequality,inequality,Gini,1 per cent,elephant chart,elephant Global income inequality: time to revise the elephantBranko Milanovic
Orbán,Hungary,Russia,Putin,sanctions,European Union,EU,European Parliament,commission,funds,funding Time to confront Europe’s rogue state—HungaryStephen Pogány

Most Recent Posts

reality check,EU foreign policy,Russia Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—a reality check for the EUHeidi Mauer, Richard Whitman and Nicholas Wright
permanent EU investment fund,Recovery and Resilience Facility,public investment,RRF Towards a permanent EU investment fundPhilipp Heimberger and Andreas Lichtenberger
sustainability,SDGs,Finland Embedding sustainability in a government programmeJohanna Juselius
social dialogue,social partners Social dialogue must be at the heart of Europe’s futureClaes-Mikael Ståhl
Jacinda Ardern,women,leadership,New Zealand What it means when Jacinda Ardern calls timePeter Davis

Other Social Europe Publications

front cover scaled Towards a social-democratic century?
Cover e1655225066994 National recovery and resilience plans
Untitled design The transatlantic relationship
Women Corona e1631700896969 500 Women and the coronavirus crisis
sere12 1 RE No. 12: Why No Economic Democracy in Sweden?

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.


DOWNLOAD HERE

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 EU recovery strategy: a blueprint for a more Social Europe or a house of cards?

This new ETUI paper explores the European Union recovery strategy, with a focus on its potentially transformative aspects vis-à-vis European integration and its implications for the social dimension of the EU’s socio-economic governance. In particular, it reflects on whether the agreed measures provide sufficient safeguards against the spectre of austerity and whether these constitute steps away from treating social and labour policies as mere ‘variables’ of economic growth.


DOWNLOAD HERE

Eurofound advertisement

Eurofound webinar: Making telework work for everyone

Since 2020 more European workers and managers have enjoyed greater flexibility and autonomy in work and are reporting their preference for hybrid working. Also driven by technological developments and structural changes in employment, organisations are now integrating telework more permanently into their workplace.

To reflect on these shifts, on 6 December Eurofound researchers Oscar Vargas and John Hurley explored the challenges and opportunities of the surge in telework, as well as the overall growth of telework and teleworkable jobs in the EU and what this means for workers, managers, companies and policymakers.


WATCH THE WEBINAR HERE

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

The winter issue of the Progressive Post magazine from FEPS is out!

The sequence of recent catastrophes has thrust new words into our vocabulary—'polycrisis', for example, even 'permacrisis'. These challenges have multiple origins, reinforce each other and cannot be tackled individually. But could they also be opportunities for the EU?

This issue offers compelling analyses on the European health union, multilateralism and international co-operation, the state of the union, political alternatives to the narrative imposed by the right and much more!


DOWNLOAD HERE

About Social Europe

Our Mission

Article Submission

Membership

Advertisements

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

Social Europe Archives

Search Social Europe

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Follow us

RSS Feed

Follow us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on LinkedIn

Follow us on YouTube