The European Trade Union Institute

The central questions and main contextual background explored by this year’s issue of Benchmarking are, at their core, fairly straightforward. Europe is at a crossroads, painfully navigating four transitions at once: a (perhaps less than obvious) economic policy transition best exemplified by the debates surrounding the EU economic governance framework (COM(2022) 583 final); a geopolitical transition, increasingly shaped by the ‘open strategic autonomy’ debate (Akgüç 2021) and, of course, by the Russian war of aggression on Ukraine; and the two more readily acknowledged green and digital transitions. It is, however, becoming increasingly clear, as explored in greater detail in the following chapters, that these four transitions imply important trade-offs and have significant ramifications for the social dimension of the European project and for the livelihoods of European workers. These consequences are currently being ignored by the principal institutional actors that are shaping them and that, at times, have conflicting priorities. 

The Education Department of the European Trade Union Institute is organising an online course entitled “Digital facilitation in synchronous events”. This training will take place from 8 May to 2 June, with a pre-engagement phase starting on April 17.

Target participants:

Trainers, facilitators of online events and courses, Eurotrainers and other colleagues working on training development within their European Trade Union organisations.

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.

The labour market position of the lower skilled is increasingly under pressure in most high income countries. Their bargaining position is declining under the twin pressures of globalisation and technological change; and they are at risk of losing access to better positions as firms’ pay and conditions arrangements increasingly drift apart. These rising between-firm differences partly come about through the increasing separation of lower skilled workers into lower-paying firms with worse conditions, thereby reducing their opportunities further. One mechanism driving this is the process of (domestic) outsourcing where main firms take certain tasks that are seen as non-core out of their payroll, instead purchasing those same tasks from another official employer while being able to retain control. Workers who see their jobs outsourced generally have to work under worse conditions and for lower pay.

Online labour platforms are redefining the world of work, but little is known even now about the drivers of worker engagement in this type of activity. Earlier studies focused on individual preferences and job characteristics such as flexibility or low entry barriers, but the relative role of such pull factors is limited given widespread worker discontent and generally precarious and unstable conditions, in many respects similar to the low-wage and informal sector.

This paper presents the results of a mapping of social dialogue and collective bargaining experiences in the European platform economy. Building on a descriptive analysis of the initiatives, the report provides insights into collective bargaining strategies and factors that have led platforms to negotiate. 

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.

It is widely accepted that the pursuit of economic growth is becoming increasingly infeasible and undesirable, necessitating substantial changes to European economies.
European economic activity in terms of emissions, resource use, pollution and impacts on biodiversity is ecologically unsustainable. In the face of tipping points soon to be reached and cascading, inter-related ecological crises, the impacts of economic activities need to fall rapidly and substantially to avert disaster. It is no longer possible to decouple growth from ecological impacts sufficiently within the required timespan. Furthermore, even disregarding the necessity to reduce ecological impacts, a multitude of reasons – from energy crises to demographic change – are leading many economists to question European growth prospects.

At the beginning of 2022, hopes were high that the Covid-19 pandemic was on the ebb and that the European Union (EU) would be able to focus again on the main challenge of this century: how to proactively tackle the green and digital transition in a socially fair and inclusive way. But the Russian invasion of Ukraine dashed these hopes. Realpolitik was back on the agenda, with the EU having to figure out how to deal with its Eastern neighbour. Overnight, EU dependence on Russian fossil fuels became a major headache. With energy and food prices soaring, double-digit inflation reared its ugly head throughout the world, resulting in a cost-of-living crisis which has pushed millions of people into poverty as well as stoking popular discontent and mobilising trade unions, with the prospect of further civil unrest, protests and strikes. Obviously, all this had a major influence on EU policymaking: while the Russian military aggression in early 2022 prompted the EU to respond with unprecedented steps forward in European integration, it also highlighted the weaknesses in the EU governance system. A health crisis, an economic and financial crisis and a climate crisis are unfolding in parallel, while full-scale war is back in Europe. The question is now whether ‘normal times’ will ever return or whether we will find ourselves living in a state of ‘permacrisis’.

The right to strike varies considerably across Europe, often with specific rules and restrictions imposed on public service workers. The European Trade Union Institute has produced 35 country factsheets that explain the latest legal situation. EPSU has also begun to add countries outside the European Union and candidate countries, and a total of 48 countries are now covered.