New CESI position paper on the future of work
2019-12-15 12:00
On the occasion of the beginning of the new EU legislative term, the CESI Presidium adopted a new position paper on ‘The future of work: social protection, decent employment and interest representation’. As a key topic area for both trade unions and the incoming European Commission, the paper is intended to be a basis for further discussion and give impetus and guidance on how to manage employment and labour market in the era of digitalisation and work diversification during the next years.
Also a result of the first CESI Summer Days in June 2019, the paper stresses the extent to which ongoing globalisation, rapidly-evolving digitalisation and the continuous development of revolutionary new technologies and mobility concepts on all levels have brought fundamental changes to our economies and societies.
It also underlines how more and more people work online, ‘in the cloud’, perform mobile work or engage in simultaneous employment for several employers, across borders or in different jurisdictions has all led to rapidly diversifying employment and social protection models.
Finally, it emphasises the need for trade unions to adapt or at least complement their role and portfolios if they wish to remain relevant actors and interlocutors to help shape employment, working conditions and social protection for people in de facto dependent, precarious employment and self-employment.
Key demands are in this context put forward in the fields of:
• labour law, including on retraining and skills training, working time, minimum wages, abusive uses of atypical employment models, and the classification of those in precarious atypical work or in bogus self-employment as ‘workers’ or ’employees’ that are subject to basic labour law
• standards for formal, effective and adequate social protection especially for all those in precarious employment, as well as further provisions to improve the transparency and transferability of social security entitlements
• more tailored interest representation of trade unions and ways for trade unions to expand and better represent individualising workforces
The full paper is available for download in the resources section.
