Έκδοση της Ευρωπαϊκής Επιτροπής - Γενική Διεύθυνση Απασχόληση, Κοινωνικές Υποθέσεις και Κοινωνική Ένταξη:

The objective of the study is to gather evidence and to better understand the challenges, opportunities and trends in relation to the flexibility of working time and work location, with a focus on telework and the right to disconnect. 

Βρείτε την έκδοση και στον Κατάλογο της Βιβλιοθήκης [2] του ΟΜΕΔ. 

On 11 March 2024, employment and social affairs ministers from the EU Member States endorsed the agreement reached with the European Parliament in February 2024 on the platform work directive. The directive introduces the presumption of employment – to be applied following national rules – as well as the first EU rules to regulate algorithmic management in the workplace.

Platform work is an umbrella concept covering a heterogeneous group of economic activities completed through a digital platform. Platform workers' rights are not enshrined in EU labour law and this is increasingly leading to problems relating to various aspects of their work and human development. To remedy this situation, the European Commission submitted a proposal for a directive aimed at improving the working conditions of platform workers, clarifying their employment status, and establishing the first EU rules for the use of artificial intelligence in the workplace. 

A decision by the ILO’s Governing Body opens the way for new work by the ILO on the estimation and operationalization of living wages, and on engaging with living wage initiatives.

The new rules address cases of misclassification of platform workers and ease the way for such workers to be reclassified as employees, guaranteeing easier access to their rights as employees under EU law. The agreement also includes provisions that will better protect platform workers’ personal data and increase transparency on how algorithm systems are used to take decisions in the workplace.

The latest episode of Eurofound Talks, recorded shortly before Eurofound publishes its harmonised analysis of 2024 minimum wage developments, looks at the changes to minimum wages in 2023. Mary McCaughey speaks with Eurofound experts Christine Aumayr-Pintar and Carlos Vacas-Soriano about the adequacy of minimum wages in Europe as they stand at the moment, how the EU has sought to improve the situation of low-wage earners through a Directive on adequate minimum wages, and how widespread the issue of minimum wage non-compliance is in the European Union.

Ensuring greater social protection for self-employed people has been the subject of much policy debate in recent years. In 2019, the Council of the European Union adopted a recommendation on access to social protection for workers and the self-employed. Sudden reductions in income during the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the vulnerability of many self-employed workers. Using data from the European Working Conditions Telephone Survey, this report examines the working conditions of different groups of self-employed people. It analyses measures taken at EU Member State level to better protect self-employed individuals against the risks of unemployment, workplace accidents and sickness, and presents lessons learned from measures implemented during the pandemic.

The report highlights the pervasive issue of violence and harassment (V&H) in workplaces worldwide, affecting more than one in five employed individuals. It underscores the significant impact of V&H on individuals, enterprises, and society, exacerbated by evolving work conditions like digitalization and work-life balance challenges. The report emphasizes the importance of adopting comprehensive strategies, including the ILO Violence and Harassment Convention (No. 190) and occupational safety and health (OSH) measures, to prevent and address V&H, while also examining different national approaches and the effectiveness of collective bargaining agreements and legal frameworks in tackling this issue.

Today, at the Val Duchesse Social Partners Summit, the European Commission, the Belgian Presidency of the Council of the EU and European social partners signed a ‘Tripartite Declaration for a Thriving European Social Dialogue’.

In this pilot project, Eurofound successfully established the feasibility of, and piloted, an EU-wide database of minimum pay rates contained in collective agreements related to low-paid workers. A conceptual and measurement framework was devised, a total of 692 collective agreements – related to 24 low-paid sectors of interest – were selected to be ‘fully coded’ and representative data on negotiated minimum pay were compiled for 24 EU Member States. Based on more than 3,202 renewal texts, time series of collectively agreed minimum rates were created from 2015 to 2022 for 19 countries. This is the first time that an EU-wide data collection has provided comparative time series on negotiated pay. Key findings are is that in some countries outdated agreements contain rates below the applicable statutory minima, and that the potential of collective agreements to regulate pay generally or for employees earning higher wages than the minimum pay is not always fully capitalised on.

Achieving the right to disconnect is becoming a test case of the European Union’s commitment to social dialogue.