(Brussels, 7 November), EPSU’s committee for national and EU administrations (NEA) held two meetings in October 2024. The first NEA standing committee following EPSU’s Congress elected its chairs for the next five years and took several decisions. Second was the far less smooth-sailing social dialogue committee with the employers for central/federal governments, who were mostly determined to postpone decisions.
The NEA committee on 3 October brought together 36 trade union leaders from 23 EU and non-EU countries as well as the EU institutions with the participation of freshy elected French Left MEP and former labour inspector, Anthony Smith. The discussion with Smith centred on the lack of resources for labour inspectors to do their job and protect workers.
For the next legislature, the French MEP will seek to defend the importance of an independent public service of labour inspections, in line with ILO Convention 81, in all EU social initiatives as called for in our joint statement with Eurocadres. He will raise the question of labour inspections across the committees where he has a seat, including the influential industry and trade committee. In the constitutional matters committee, Smith will argue for a much stronger social dimension in the EU accession criteria.
The discussion ended with the adoption of three short term decisions. Firstly, EPSU will take part in a European Parliament event on 18-19 November addressing deaths at work. Secondly, it will explore possibilities to hold a joint event on labour inspectors in the Parliament in the second half of 2025. Thirdly, EPSU’s 2013 research on labour inspectors at times of austerity will be updated in 2025 to feed into the joint event.
The exchange was enriched with two excellent presentations by John Magne Pedersen Tangen NTL, Norway on organising labour inspectors and by Uzbekistan healthcare union RCHWU on recruiting its own labour inspectors in the hundreds.
Third-party violence and harassment was the next item tackled by the Committee, which recommended adoption of the revised guidelines on the matter by the social dialogue committee. The new Guidelines, addressed to national social partners, cover five sectors: central government; local and regional government; health and hospitals; education; and hospitality. The negotiations lasted six months. The EPSU secretariat recommended adoption of the final compromise text which includes all points raised by the unions in its mandate such as:
- TPVH can never be normalised or minimised and the best way forward is to ensure that every workplace has a policy in place in consultation or negotiation with the trade unions.
- Such a policy should be embedded in occupational health and safety, gender equality and anti-discrimination and trade union rights.
- gender-based violence is inherent to violence in line with ILO Convention 190. This includes dealing with domestic violence which has strong economic consequences.
- sufficient staffing levels and decent workload as well as digitalisation need to be part of health risk assessments at the workplace as a key prevention tool.
The NEA committee approved its workplan for the next five years, subject to another round of consultation in writing, which includes amongst others the following:
- The fight against austerity through targeted research to help argue more state workers and civil servants to respond to citizens’ needs and respond to the green and digital challenges
- The implementation of our social partner agreement on digitalisation, adopted in October 2022, via a directive will remain a top priority for the next few months.
- As part of EPSU’s general policy against commercialisation of public services, the NEA committee will keep the focus on private and pricy consulting firms such as McKinzey, Accenture, PWC and others who are increasingly present in the state sector.
- The EU fundamental right to good administration based on trade union rights will be the subject of a panEuropean conference in 2028.
- In the field of health and safety the focus will be on psychosocial risks with a view to feed into the ETUC/Eurocadres related campaign.
- Migration policy will continue to be led by NEA, in addition to feeding into the ETUC policy, the objective is to increase interest amongst affiliates especially from Eastern and Central Europe in the EUcare network to improve reception of migrants and refugees.
Lastly, the Committee reelected Karin Brunzell, ST Sweden and Alain Parisot, UNSA, France, as presidents and Federico Trastulli, UILPA, Italy, as vice-president. As the EPSU statutes do not foresee a dual presidency, the Executive Committee will be invited to endorse this NEA novelty.
In contrast, the social dialogue committee of 23 October took... no decisions. It postponed the adoption of the TPVH Guidelines due to dissenting views in the employers’ group, EUPAE. It is hoped that the matter will be solved in mid-November. It also failed to make progress on a project outline on green transition.
The employers expressed strong reluctance to keep monitoring the scale and impact of austerity measures including those related to the new EU fiscal rules on the ground that they represent governments. The unions insisted on discussing the human, social and equality impact of planned or effective cuts in jobs, to no avail. This is a setback compared to ten years ago, when the Committee agreed a statement on EU-coordinated austerity.
More positive was an exchange of views on key priorities with the European Commission’s recently appointed Director for employment and social dialogue Ana Luisa Cabral. Cabral acknowledged good receipt of the revisions made to the NEA agreement on digitalisation in light of the Commission’s initial legal check. The changes aim to bring all the provisions in line with TFEU article 153 on social policy. Cabral committed to following up on the agreement. As the decision on the agreement is supposed to conditioned upon the completion of the social partners’ consultation on telework and right to disconnect, Cabral also said that the second stage should be published before or after Christmas.
Meanwhile, EPSU will continue pushing for a transparent and fair procedure on the Commission’s legislative implementation of EU social partner agreements in the context of the ongoing negotiations at cross sectoral level of a new Pact on Social dialogue.
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