This Briefing forms part of an EPRS series which offers a synthesis of the pre-legislative state-of-play and advance consultation on a range of key European Commission priorities during the latter’s five-year term in office. An EPRS analysis of the positions of partner governmental organisations at EU, national, regional and local levels suggests that they would like the following main considerations to be reflected in the discussion on the working conditions of platform workers: The employment status of platform workers has to be clarified. The binary system (employed or self-employed) is challenged by the specific characteristics of platform work and bogus self-employment. Platform workers have the right to be correctly informed. This can be facilitated by transparency, designated advisory services, information campaigns and communication channels among workers. Local and regional authorities are witnessing the negative social consequences of the limited rights of platform workers. Social measures should cover the specific needs of these workers in relation to sickness, accident, unemployment, protection at work and pension benefits.
The European Commission has proposed to amend Directive 2004/37/EC, by expanding its scope and by including and/or revising occupational exposure limit values for a number of cancer- or mutation-causing chemical agents. Following on from three previous legislative amendments, which covered a total of 26 priority chemical agents, the present (fourth) proposal addresses an additional three. The proposal was announced as one of the first measures of the Commission's commitment to fight cancer under Europe's Beating Cancer Plan. Broad discussions with scientists and social partners fed into all four proposals. Parliament's Committee on Employment and Social Affairs (EMPL) is in charge of the file. The rapporteur's draft report was considered in the EMPL meeting on 27 January 2021 and adopted on 25 March 2021. The Council agreed its position on 25 November 2020. Second edition. The 'EU Legislation in Progress' briefings are updated at key stages throughout the legislative procedure.
Asbestos is responsible for more than half of the deaths from occupational cancer in the world. Since 2005 Asbestos is banned in Europe. The risks remain, because of the maintenance or demolition work on older buildings and their renovation (increasing energy efficiency) result in substantial exposure to asbestos and many people still work and live in asbestos contaminated buildings.
The Machinery Directive establishes a regulatory framework for mechanical engineering industry products. It regulates the harmonisation of essential health and safety requirements for machinery in order to ensure the free movement of machinery products within the internal market on the one hand, and a high level of protection for machinery users on the other. The European Commission's Regulatory Fitness and Performance Programme (REFIT) evaluation of 2018 concluded that the directive has generally remained relevant and effective. However, it pointed at certain shortcomings in the enforcement of the directive (mainly related to market surveillance, a Member State responsibility), and found that despite its technology-neutral design, the directive might not sufficiently cover new risks stemming from emerging technologies (in particular robots using artificial intelligence technologies). The Commission issued its new proposal for a regulation on machinery products (COM(2021) 202) on 21 April 2021, as part of the 'artificial intelligence package'. In particular, the change of instrument (regulation instead of a directive) aims at ensuring a uniform implementation in the Member States and avoiding the risk of 'gold plating'.
The EU fruit and vegetable sector is heavily dependent on a non-national labour force, either from other EU Member States or third countries. EU Member States manage their own seasonal worker schemes depending on the needs of the domestic labour market, their ties with third countries and their broader immigration system. The reality of seasonal agricultural work is a harsh one, with generally poor working and living conditions. The coronavirus pandemic, which disrupted harvests in the spring of 2020 as seasonal workers faced travel restrictions, also highlighted their essential role in EU agriculture and laid bare their sometimes appalling working and living conditions. Reacting to this situation, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on the protection of seasonal workers in June 2020, calling on Member States to ensure proper implementation of the relevant EU legislation and on the European Commission to issue new specific guidelines and propose long-term solutions to fight abusive practices and protect victims. In July 2020, the Commission responded to this call by issuing new guidelines on the protection of seasonal workers in the context of the pandemic, announcing further action, including ongoing work with the European Labour Authority.
The current coronavirus pandemic and its accompanying health and economic crises have highlighted and heightened certain trends and challenges which were already affecting the labour market in Europe. These include accelerated digitalisation and automation, increased use of artificial intelligence, constraints relating to a lack of digital skills, and problems concerning the status of platform workers and other workers in non-standard forms of employment. In parallel, there has been an unprecedented expansion in teleworking, and in the development of transport and delivery platforms, as a result of the need for social distancing during the pandemic. Many of these changes will outlive the current crisis and generate in turn new challenges, which the EU and Member States will need to address.
The right to disconnect refers to the right of a worker to be able to disconnect from work-related electronic communications during non-work hours and during holidays.
The COVID-19 pandemic has underlined the importance of health and safety at the workplace to protect workers and for the continuity of critical services. With the green and digital transitions, demographic shifts, and changes to the traditional workplace set-up, it is time to ensure that occupational safety and health is fit for the future.
This study was produced to support the impact assessment of the new EU-level legislative initiative, aimed at improving the working conditions and social rights of people working through platforms with the view to support the conditions for sustainable growth of digital labour platforms in the European Union.
The analysis considers evidence on the expected impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on jobs, discusses the potential of AI to create decent jobs and explores the extent to which AI offers opportunities and poses risks to working conditions. The analysis examines current policies at the European Union (EU) and Member State level and recommends some areas for action at the EU level.
For the purposes of this study, ‘precarious work’ is taken to mean employment that satisfies at least one of the following criteria: very low pay, very low intensity working hours, or low job security. The latter criterion is interpreted broadly to encompass not only temporary contracts, but also jobs with few training and career development opportunities, a lack of collective representation and an absence of social protection rights or employment-related benefits. Discrimination in the form of ‘intersecting inequalities’ based on a person’s age, country of origin, disability, level of education or sexual orientation, is a key determinant both of a person’s exposure to and experience of precarious work. Although men are clearly affected by precarious work, it is women who are particularly vulnerable to this phenomenon.
This paper discusses findings from a review of recent literature on support for securing compliance and better practice in occupational safety and health (OSH) in the changing world of work in advanced market economies. It explores innovative responses of regulators and private actors to the challenges created by these changes, as well as considering their impact on further forms of support for good practice, such as provided by prevention services and OSH professionals. Although the review is based on a wide-ranging search of the literature in English, its discussion is focused on implications for prevention policies in the European Union. In particular, it considers the extent to which the literature suggests that the current strategic framework for supporting compliance — via EU policies over the past two decades, with a new Strategic Framework anticipated in 2021 — can be said to address these challenges effectively. Not surprisingly, it finds that the literature reveals some gaps between the policy rhetoric and the practice at both EU and Member State levels.
David Walters et al. Working paper - European Trade Union Institute, May 2021
Immigrants in rural areas and immigrant employment in the agricultural sector have been studied from a variety of perspectives. However, we currently lack a bird's-eye view of these two phenomena covering all EU member states through time. This paper tackles that gap, first by describing the main features of immigrant settlement and economic integration in rural areas in the EU. Second, it offers an EU-wide overview of immigrants' integration in the agricultural sector. Then, it investigates empirically the degree to which the different characteristics of agricultural production in two member states – Italy and Spain – are associated with a migrant presence in the area. The study finds that, in the context of a shrinking agricultural labour force, the share of migrant workers in that sector in several regions is increasing over time. Finally, the case studies on Italy and Spain demonstrate that the relative size of the migrant population is related to the typology of agricultural land use and to the labour intensity and seasonality of cultivation.
Sona Kalantaryan et al., Journal of Rural Studies, Volume 88, December 2021, Pages 462-472