Employment Guidelines

Key points

The EESC:

• welcomes the stronger emphasis in the revised guidelines on quality jobs, access to training, collective bargaining and social protection, and stresses that the sustainable competitiveness of the European Union, productivity, innovation and social progress must be mutually reinforcing;
• (on Guideline 5) welcomes the Commission’s proposal to shift taxation away from labour towards other sources, and calls on Member States to continue tax reforms accordingly while assessing the distributional fairness of their policies; supports the reduction of administrative burdens for businesses and calls for Guideline 5 to clarify that this should happen without diminishing workers’ rights;
• (on Guideline 6) reaffirms the right to lifelong learning and calls for Guideline 6 to support effective exercise of this right and access to high-quality training throughout working life; calls for Guideline 6 to recognise non-formal, informal and community-based learning, including skills acquired through volunteering; welcomes the partnership approach in Guideline 6 and calls for relevant civil society organisations to be explicitly recognised as partners in skills development and access to employment; calls on Member States to better integrate the social economy into the implementation of employment and active labour-market policies; welcomes the Commission’s emphasis on effective and tailor-made support for jobseekers and calls on Member States to address the considerable barriers faced by long-term unemployed persons; calls for inviting Member States to monitor the labour market situation of young people through a comprehensive set of indicators and to ensure the effective availability and high quality of Youth Guarantee offers; welcomes the focus on removing barriers to women’s labour-market participation and calls for the full and effective transposition and implementation of the Pay Transparency Directive; stresses that accessible, affordable and high-quality care services, supported by fair working conditions and career prospects in the care sector, and a more equal sharing of care responsibilities between women and men, are essential for women’s labour-market participation; welcomes the explicit reference to workplace violence and harassment as barriers to gender equality and women’s labour-market participation and calls on the remaining Member States to ratify ILO Convention No 190.
• (On Guideline 7) welcomes the Commission’s recognition of national practices and the autonomy of the social partners; welcomes the call to promote higher collective bargaining coverage and enable effective collective bargaining at all appropriate levels; welcomes the focus in Guideline 7 on preventing labour-market segmentation, undeclared work and abusive employment arrangements, which may include unpaid traineeships, and stresses that these objectives should also be effectively pursued where work is organised through complex subcontracting chains; welcomes the emphasis on fair, transparent and predictable working conditions and calls for Member States to promote job quality through a comprehensive approach addressing elements such as working conditions, health and safety, equal treatment, autonomy, career development, working-time organisation and social dialogue at all levels while ensuring the availability of different and innovative forms of employment, with the involvement of the social partners; welcomes the Commission’s emphasis on the effective, responsible, inclusive and ethical use of AI at work and stresses that Member States should ensure that the use of artificial intelligence and algorithmic management tools fully respects workers’ rights.
• (On Guideline 8) welcomes the emphasis on comprehensive anti-poverty strategies and on adequate and sustainable pensions and calls for Guideline 8 to recognise that sustainability strongly depends on high employment, quality jobs, adequate wages and less interrupted careers.