To close this season, etui.podcast went a little further afield than usual to take a look at the United States labour relations landscape with Kayla Blado, who recently served as Director of Congressional and Public Affairs at the US National Labor Relations Board.
In our chat she offered some insights from her experience at the federal agency, into the recent, particularly volatile chapter in US politics, and into the country’s industrial relations system more broadly.
Interested in hearing some more of our interviews? Take a look back at this and previous seasons of etui.podcast here.
The European Commission recently launched an evaluation of the 2014 directives which shape the rules around public procurement, the process by which public contracts are put out to tender.
Trade unions have called for a revision that ensures the inclusion of criteria based on quality, rather than only price. In particular, they have argued that these rules can be used as a tool to improve labour conditions and promote collective bargaining, rather than allowing some employers to be undercut by those who show less respect for workers’ rights and trade union engagement.
Discussion with Niklas Bruun, professor of law at the Hanken School of Economics in Helsinki, about his recent paper for the ETUI on how EU public procurement law can be improved.
Stan De Spiegelaere, Director of Policy and Research at UNI Europa, the trade union federation of service workers, lends some further insight into how the current problems play out on the ground.
Further reading
Promoting collective bargaining in public procurement | etui
Collective bargaining and public procurement in Germany | etui
‘Invest now or deindustrialise’ was the recent, stark warning put to the EU by industrial trade unions.
Continued heavy losses in manufacturing jobs over the past decades are now culminating in what has been termed a crisis for European industry and the many workers it employs.
But how should this crisis be addressed? Is the European Commission taking the right approach with the recently presented Clean Industrial Deal? And what could a European, and worker-friendly, industrial policy look like today?
Discussion with Judith Kirton-Darling, General Secretary of the industrial workers’ federation industriAll Europe, and Ludovic Voet, Confederal Secretary at the European Trade Union Confederation.
Further reading
Industrial policy for quality jobs and a just transition | etui
Benchmarking Working Europe 2024 | etui
Green transition and job quality: risks for worker representation | etui
Workers and the climate challenge | etui
The future of the automotive sector | etui
ETUC calls for adequate financing and responsible simplification in the Clean Industrial Deal | ETUC
Amidst all the current debates in Europe about competitiveness, productivity, migration, and economic transitions – both ‘green’ and ‘digital’ - the ongoing issue of labour shortages has emerged as a major policy concern, intrinsically tied to all of the above.
But what are the major factors driving these shortages? Where do we see them the most? And what kinds of solutions would be the most effective?
Discussion with ETUI Senior Researcher Wouter Zwysen, author of multiple recent papers on labour shortages, job quality, and workers' bargaining power.
Further reading:
Labour shortages, job quality and workers’ bargaining power | etui
Labour shortages – turning away from bad jobs | etui
Monopsony and non-competitive labour markets | etui
Benchmarking Working Europe 2024 | etui
Wage inequality in Europe | etui
Lowering wage inequality through collectively negotiated minima | etui
Green transition and job quality: risks for worker representation | etui
Industrial policy for quality jobs and a just transition | etui
What are governments doing about low-wage employment – and how successful is it? | etui
Security is the watchword across European politics today.
But what is the place for a progressive social and environmental policy agenda in a security-conscious, or even security-driven, Europe?
And where does the trade union movement fit in?
Discussion with ETUI Senior Researcher Christophe Degryse about his recent Foresight Brief, ‘What if? A socio-environmental agenda in a 'security Europe'?’
Further reading
What if? A socio-environmental agenda in a 'security Europe'? | etui
Rethinking social protection in the green transition | etui
Industrial policy for quality jobs and a just transition | etui
Social policy in the European Union: state of play 2023 | etui
The standard 40-hour work week has been around for a while now as our full-time norm. But in recent times, debates about working time reduction appear to have been making somewhat of a comeback – particularly in the form of the 4-day week idea.
Is it time to rethink our working time norms? And what role is the labour movement playing in this debate?
Discussion with Agnieszka Piasna, ETUI Senior Researcher and co-author of the paper ‘Negotiating working time reduction’.
Further reading
Negotiating working time reduction | etui
‘Winning back our time’, in HesaMag#29, Navigating the AI revolution | etui
Friday on my mind - Working time in the manufacturing sector | etui
An anniversary can be a good occasion for reflection.
20 years ago, in 2004, eight central and eastern European countries joined the European Union. Followed by the accession of Bulgaria and Romania in 2007 and Croatia in 2013, these successive enlargements nearly doubled the number of EU Member States. And they came with many hopes for economic and social cohesion, as well as for strengthened industrial relations in the region.
So to what extent have these hopes been met?
Discussion with Vera Scépanović, lecturer in International Relations and European Studies at Leiden University and co-editor of Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research, the ETUI’s quarterly journal published by Sage Publishing.
This conversation is based on the issue of Transfer, ‘20 years after: perspectives on industrial relations in Central and Eastern Europe 20 years after the EU enlargement’.
This year, after a long and embattled process, the EU adopted new rules to improve working conditions on digital labour platforms, particularly regarding employment status and the use of algorithmic management.
The European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) has called the 2024 Platform Work Directive ‘a policy milestone’ and ‘a testament to the resilience of collective efforts’.
Discussion with Tea Jarc, ETUC Confederal Secretary, and Silvia Rainone, ETUI Senior Researcher, about what exactly is in the Directive, what it took to get it passed, and what it means for the millions of people working through digital platforms today.
Further reading
The EU Platform Work Directive | etui
Inevitable, vulnerable, unprofitable: an inquiry into food delivery platforms in Europe | etui
Digital labour platforms and migrant workers | etui
Exercising workers' rights in algorithmic management systems | etui
Juggling online gigs with offline jobs | etui
Collective bargaining in the platform economy | etui
The term ‘burnout’ has become a common one in recent times. But are we clear on what it really means and, even more importantly, exactly what causes it? The World Health Organization recently recognised it as an ‘occupational phenomenon’. So what should organisations be doing to prevent burnout or, at the very least, to address it when it does occur amongst their employees?
Discussion with Evangelia Demerouti, Professor of Work and Organizational Psychology at the Eindhoven University of Technology and co-author (with Niels Adaloudis) of the recent ETUI report ‘Addressing burnout in organisations’.
Further reading
Addressing burnout in organisations | etui
Psychosocial risks: a mounting crisis | etui
Psychosocial risks in the healthcare and long-term care sectors | etui
Recent years have arguably seen a ‘social turn’ in EU policymaking, with initiatives on minimum wages, pay transparency, platform work, corporate due diligence, and health and safety coming to fruition, amongst many others.
But in this moment of political change and uncertainty, can this 'social paradigm shift' be sustained?
Guests Bart Vanhercke, ETUI Research Director, and Sotiria Theodoropoulou, Head of Unit for 'European economic, employment and social policies', discuss the current state of play.
Further reading:
Benchmarking Working Europe 2024 | etui
Social policy in the European Union: state of play 2023 | etui
Industrial policy for quality jobs and a just transition | etui
Is the European Green Deal really leaving no-one behind? | etui
The resurgence of the social dimension of the EU raises a number of questions: in what way and to what extent has the EU social dimension indeed been strengthened since the adoption of the EPSR? To what extent are newly adopted social policies actually likely to contribute to improving people’s lives, and in particular the lives of those who face precarious working or living conditions? What explains the broad political support of the centre-left and centre-right for this social turn?
AI is now widely used to automate business processes and replace labour-intensive tasks while changing the skill demands for those that remain. How are AI-based tools deployed to monitor worker conduct and to automate HR management processes? Through the dual lens of comparative labour law and employment relations research, our guest investigate the role of collective bargaining and government policy in shaping strategies to deploy new digital and AI-based technologies at work.
More about the special issue: https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/trsa/29/1
There are almost 2.6 million domestic workers in Europe working in private homes or others. Though representing a huge and vital workforce, their economic and social contribution has often been denied and they are longing for recognition. Although domestic workers are finally enjoying more social rights, trade unions have a key role to play to achieve improved working conditions for domestic workers within and across borders.
How can the European Union steer a course towards long-term social and ecological well-being in the context of incessant emergencies? Two decades of perpetual crisis management have greatly eroded Europe’s capacity to pursue a sustainable future, as considerations of short-term expediency continue to hamper the four necessary transitions – green, digital, geopolitical and socio-economic.
Find out more in Benchmarking Working Europe 2023
Until recently, the discussion of social welfare systems in Europe was disconnected from ecological concerns and policies. The relevant objectives, instruments and actors were largely different. Environmental and climate science, on the one hand, and the analysis and theoretical foundations of welfare systems, on the other, emerged and developed in disparate silos. While the welfare state was designed to reduce social risks and ensure (relative) stability of income and societies, it was also created as an institution that favours economic growth and the maintenance of income and consumption. Its aim was not to change behaviour but to maintain it, with a focus on redistribution. With environmental inequalities increasingly embedded in social ones, environmental policies are becoming social policies, and vice-versa.
Advanced capitalist societies seem to limp from one existential crisis to the next, becoming ever more fragile and unstable. Yet the dominant theoretical frameworks in political economy view capitalism as fundamentally stable or, at most, subject to incremental change. Baccaro, Blyth and Pontusson emphasise the diversity of capitalist trajectories or, rather, growth models.
One should be careful using the word ‘historic’. But in the case of the directive on adequate minimum wages in the European Union it might actually be appropriate.
Minimum wage directive boost to struggling workers
Energy now costs month’s wages for low paid
EU confirms prices not wages driving inflation
The European minimum wage on the doorstep - Torsten Müller & Thorsten Schulten
Minimum-wages directive—history in the making - Torsten Müller & Thorsten Schulten
Even in Continental Europe, trade unions are the most powerful voice defending outsiders in welfare state politics, and reducing their institutional power in unemployment insurance and elsewhere will likely make things worse for outsiders and not – as certain political leaders in these countries often imply – make things better.
In this episode, you will be hearing a conversation between Hamid Ekbia and Nicola Countouris on AI, the concept of Heteromation and how artificial intelligence is impacting and will impact our (working) lives.
This episode is part of the Reconstruction Beyond the Pandemic Project.
What are psychosocial risks? PSRs are increasingly impacting all industries in every Member State. The effects of psychosocial risks can be long-lasting and have both physical and psychological impacts on workers’ lives (such as depression, musculoskeletal disorders or burnout).
Find out more: https://www.etui.org/publications/psychosocial-risks-europe
https://www.etui.org/sites/default/files/2021-12/01-ETU%20BM2021-Chap5-Occupational%20health%20and%20safety%20inequalities%20in%20the%20EU_1.pdf
