Pensions/retirement, Precarious employment, Europe

A new report from the Committee on Workers' Capital reveals the obscure way in which many fund managers charge costs to pension funds. It makes suggestions and provides guidance on how these costs can be made public and how this contributes to better pension fund performance and ultimately to higher pay-outs.

The European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) says that the proposals for Pan-European Personal Pensions (PEPP) should include stronger protection for workers' savings. The ETUC welcomed some improvements voted through by the European Parliament related to regulation and preferential treatment of schemes with good governance. However, it underlined that initiatives like PEPP should not be used to undermine collective and publicly-provided pension schemes which need to be maintained and strengthened.

Negotiations are set to begin between the European institutions over revisions to the Posted Workers Directive. European trade union organisations including the ETUC and the EFFAT and ETF sector federations, have expressed their disappointment with the outcome of the meeting of Employment Ministers on 23 October. This agreed a document that excludes road transport workers; contains insufficient safeguards on allowances; does not include a legal base to make it an instrument for the protection of workers, as opposed to only single market law; fails to recognise many types of collective

The ETUC has made a number of specific proposals for revision of the Written Statement Directive. The ETUC says that the legislation should cover as many workers as possible, including the growing number of self-employed and gig economy workers. It should provide information before the start of the employment relationship and extend the information requirements, on pay and working time and other issues. The ETUC also wants to see a right to adequate remuneration and guaranteed hours (putting an end to zero-hour type contracts) and ensure online platforms do not avoid or evade their

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.

Following a meeting with the French president over the summer, ETUC general secretary Luca Visentini is to meet French labour minister Muriel Pénicaud to discuss possible revisions to the Posted Workers Directive. This is an important piece of legislation that needs revision to ensure it is more effective in protecting the pay and conditions of workers who are on temporary assignments in other EU countries. The ETUC wants to see a guarantee of same salary for the same work in the same place and full entitlement of posted workers to all pay and conditions in collective agreements. Along with

The ETUC has welcomed the consultation with social partners on the revision of the Written Statement Directive. Trade unions and employers have until 3 November to react to the proposals to amend the Directive which sets out what information employees should be entitled to when they start work. The ETUC is pleased that the planned changes will mean that workers in general will be covered ensuring some protection for workers in the gig economy or "employed" by platform operators like Uber. The ETUC also hopes that the proposals on minimum hours and probation periods will be clarified and

(May 2017) The revised labour code has been a major issue of debate in Lithuania for the last three years. The ETUI research organisation has just published a an update on this and other labour market, industral relations and pensions developments in the country. This is part of the ETUI's Reform Watch website covering all EU Member States.

(June 2017) The IPSO trade union that organises staff at the European Central Bank (ECB) mobilised staff for a demonstration on 7 June in protest at the ECB's long-term use of temporary contracts for staff doing permanent work. IPSO has been pushing for some time now for the Bank to end this practice where some workers have been employed for over five years, in some cases over 10 years, on renewed contracts. In the latest action IPSO also raised objections to the ECB's plans to outsource some services, starting with IT. EPSU sent a message of support.

On 20 December the European Commission published is draft directive on transparent and predictable working conditions to replace the Written Statement Directive. The initial response from the ETUC is to welcome the requirement on employers to provide information to workers on day one and to extend this right to a range of atypical workers. There are also positive measures related to training, prohibition periods, protection of trade union reps and the rights of flexible workers. However, the ETUC wants to see additional measures to tackle the worst forms of precarious employment, particularly

A new report from the European Trade Union Institute shows what aspects of work improved or deteriorated over the last decade. It updates the Institute's European Job Quality Index which covers a broad range of work and employment characteristics, including wages, non-wage aspects of employment and work organisation, and collective interest representation. The results indicate a decline in non-wage job quality over the past decade and sluggish real wage growth in the years following the crisis.

The 2018 edition of the World Employment and Social Outlook from the International Labour Organisation has a generally positive analysis of unemployment trends in Europe but underlines the often poor quality of jobs being created which has also partly contributed to constraining wages. The report says that since the onset of the 2008 financial crisis, a large share of the jobs created, especially in the Euro Area, have been part-time jobs, and workers have often taken them involuntarily, owing to the lack of full-time employment opportunities.

The ETUC has published a report examining legal issues arising from new forms of employment. It hopes that it will make an important contribution to the debate around what action to take to provide protection for workers who fall outside the normal framework of labour and social legislation. The legal experts who compiled the report included a proposal for a new “personal work relation” that might help tackle these issues.

The ETUC has welcomed elements of the latest version of the draft Directive on Transparent and Predictable Working Conditions but is disappointed that some hoped-for rights, such as a ban on zero-hours contracts, have not materialised. It notes the new rights in relation to training, probation, payment for cancelled shifts and working for more than one employer. The ETUC was also calling for the right for precarious workers to transfer to more secure forms of employment and is disappointed that workers on fewer than 12 hours a month will be excluded. EPSU reacted similarly but also underlined

Employees of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and a number of other international bodies, including NATO and the Council of Europe, joined a protest in Paris on 2 July in opposition to threats to change pension arrangements. The Member Countries of the Coordination System are calling for changes to the CPS pension scheme that was closed 17 years ago. This could involve raising the age of pension entitlement; adjusting pensions to inflation and not to salaries; and removing entitlement to the education allowance for pensioners. The OECD staff association and