Youth, Public Services, Europe

Members of EPSU's young workers' network were active at the federation's Quality Employment conference last week, chairing debates and putting together a panel to discuss the key issues they are trying to address. Zahra Yusifli from Azerbaijan and Sven De Guise from Belgium chaired the discussions on digitalisation and low pay, while Zahra was also involved in the young workers' panel with Joe O'Connor from Ireland and Judit Zsigo from Hungary. They underlined the need for trade unions to look at how they communicated with young workers and what they were doing not just recruit them but also

The ETUC reports that it has successfully negotiated and lobbied for a Recommendation by the European Council that sets out a number of measures to improve apprenticeships. These include:involving social partners in the design, governance and implementation of apprenticeship systems; a written agreement on learning and working conditions; a call for apprentices to be paid in line with national or sectoral requirements or collective agreements; and that they should be entitled to social protection, including necessary insurance in line with national legislation.

The European Commission has published its annual review of Employment and Social Developments which has a focus on intergenerational issues. The review notes the slow decline in unemployment but underlines that there remain major problems in some countries around youth unemployment while young workers in employment are more likely to face precarious employment conditions. At the other end of the age spectrum the Commission continues to focus on trends to higher effective retirement ages and the need, as it sees it, to increase retirement ages.

As the trend towards public sector pay cuts began to take hold across Europe, EPSU decided it was important to monitor the impact of those cuts and the way they were being implemented. Two major reports produced by the Labour Research Department set out not just the facts and figures in 10 countries where cuts were imposed but also provide case studies to show what those cuts have meant for individual public sector workers.