Digitalisation, Europe

While digitalisation has helped with time management in home care services and with removing routine tasks for public employment service workers, the evidence so far points to many more negative impacts in terms of psycho-social risks, physical wellbeing and increased management monitoring. These are initial findings from research being carried out for EPSU by the OSE research organisation and presented to EPSU's Quality Employment conference by Ramon Peña-Casas. The focus of the research is on the impact of digitalisation on job content, looking at work organisation, workloads and a range of

On 6-7 June, EPSU is holding a second conference in Brussels in the context of its current project on quality employment and quality public services. Along with special sessions looking at the prisons and childcare sectors there will also be debates on pay trends in the public sector compared to the private sector; low pay in sectors dominated by women; young workers and quality employment; a panel on developments in collective bargaining and some initial research findings on the impact of digitalisation on the home care and public employment services.

EPSU is organising a conference on 6-7 June in Brussels that will explore a number of collective bargaining issues. Part of the conference will focus on quality employment and will discuss in particular research on quality employment in two sectors - prisons and childcare. Other sessions will debate new research commissioned by EPSU. This includes an updated analysis comparing pay trends in the public and private sectors; union action to tackle low pay in sectors dominated by women and the impact of digitalisation in home care and public employment services. There will also be a panel debating

EPSU has launched a training project on digitalisation and collective bargaining with financial support from the European Commission. The consultants Ecorys/wmp will be providing the training in five regional seminars beginning in Bucharest on 24-25 September. The five seminars will be open to all EPSU affiliates and full details in 19 languages are available on the EPSU website.

(May 2017) Trade unions representing prison workers across Europe met in Brussels on 10 May to discuss a range of issues relating to continuing austerity, collective bargaining and trade union rights. Key issues that emerged during the meeting included the increase in violence against prison staff, problems of understaffing and developing issues around digitalisation and, in some countries, radicalisation of inmates. The meeting was part of a two-year project run by EPSU with the next meeting in December focusing on childcare workers.

(January 2017) The Eurofound agency has published an article looking at the extent to which the social partners are part of the national debates on digital change. The study covers the Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Italy and Spain. Its assessment is that national digital debates are currently at a national level and do not yet translate into implementation at sectoral or company level in all five countries, with evidence of only a few collective agreements under negotiation in Germany.

(March 2017) A joint report from the Eurofound agency and the International Labour Organisations examines the advantages and disadvantages of telework and puts forward some policy proposals on key issues. The report points to positive effects such as a shortening of commuting time, greater working time autonomy, better work–life balance, and higher productivity. However, it also notes the risks of longer working hours, interference between work and personal life, and work intensification, leading to high levels of stress.

EPSU is involved in an eight-country project (digiqualpub) that is looking at the impact of digitalisation on public services and public service workers with a focus on public administration, health and electricity. The eight countries covered are: Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland and Spain. If you are from these countries then you can participate in the survey and encourage your members and other workers to complete the questionnaire which is available in all eight languages on the project website.

At its Executive Committee meeting in June, the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) agreed a resolution setting out progress with the draft directive on improving conditions in digital labour platforms. While the directive goes some way towards meeting key ETUC demands, the Confederation is concerned to ensure that there will a presumption of employment that digital platforms will have to rebut rather than a presumption that will have to be asserted by individual workers. The first draft report in the European Parliament, published in May, supports the ETUC in this but a range of

The ETUC says that the proposed directive on platform work should deliver rights to platform workers, like paid holiday and sick pay, which have been standard for other workers for the best part of a century. The directive provides the possibility to ensure that platform workers get a secure contract and guaranteed wages rather than the fake self-employment with no protection, no pay between jobs or sick pay. The Directive can also ensure genuinely self-employed people are protected from subordination by platforms. The ETUC is concerned, however, that following heavy lobbying by the major

A new report from the Eurofound research agency has found that teleworkers are twice as likely to exceed the 48-hour working time limit as workers onsite and are significantly more likely to work in their free time. This underlines the importance of securing a right to disconnect and the report looks at the experience of the first four Member States that introduced rules and agreements on the right to disconnect prior to 2021. These have demonstrated the pivotal role of the social partners in ensuring these rules are translated into reality on the ground. The report argues that new agreements

The European Parliament (EP) has backed proposals to prevent platform companies from forcing workers into false self-employment and denying them rights to minimum wages, holiday and sick pay, and a secure employment contract. In recent years platform companies have lost a string of court cases over false self-employment, with the latest in the Netherlands where judges ruled “the legal relationship between Uber and these drivers meets all the characteristics of an employment contract.” The EP report supports a rebuttable presumption of an employment relationship for platform companies and

A new report from the Eurofound research agency argues that social dialogue plays a critical role in digitalisation at the workplace. It says that an approach that disregards employee participation and engagement will amplify negative impacts on working conditions while in the context of technological change, social dialogue can encourage greater acceptance by employees of new technologies. Among other findings the report also warns that the Internet of Things raises the greatest concerns when used for employee performance monitoring, requiring greater safeguards to protect workers’

In the week that the private sector employers at European level blocked an agreement and potential directive on telework and the right to disconnect, the Eurofound research agency published a report showing why action is urgently needed on this issue. Its new survey found that workers who telework are more likely to work longer than is contractually required and close to one fifth of respondents reported working additional hours because they are contacted outside of working hours. Eight out of 10 workers surveyed in companies with and without a right to disconnect policy reported that they