The European Trade Union Institute

The Covid-19 pandemic has affected women disproportionately and is likely to have adverse effects on gender equality. It is essential that efforts to promote gender equality be increased in order to ensure that hard-won progress in this area is not reversed.

As part of this effort, the European Commission should table a proposal on binding pay transparency measures strengthening the principle of equal pay between men and women, in accordance with the Gender Equality Strategy 2020–2025.

The need to effectively tackle global warming puts under pressure the existing industrial relations models in Europe. A new logic of sustainability needs to be incorporated into the social contracts in order to (re)build harmonious labour relations. A viable world of labour requires a new sustainability paradigm, which encompasses all three of its dimensions: economic, social and environmental.

Achieving economic sustainability (within the planetary boundaries) has become more challenging. Actual economic growth has come at a critically high cost in terms of inequality of opportunities and outcomes, planetary resources, biodiversity and environmental degradation, thus undermining both social and environmental sustainability. Social sustainability is also likely to come under increasing pressure from the impending fourth industrial revolution. In turn, widening inequality and climate change are forcing us to question the way we measure prosperity and wellbeing.

The effect of technology cannot be limited to a dichotomy of increasing versus decreasing degrees of routine. Instead, there are basic scenarios as far as the routine content of activities is concerned: a) no change in routine; b) increased routine; c) transformed routine; d) reduced routine.

SEER - Journal for labour and social affairs in Eastern Europe

This second issue of the SEER Journal for labour and social affairs in Eastern Europe for 2020 focuses on the heritage of the Dayton peace agreement 25 years after its signature as well as on wider EU-western Balkans relations.

Following the dissolution of the former state of Yugoslavia, by early 1992 the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) had voted in a referendum on a sovereign and independent BiH, recognised by the international community but not by the Bosnian Serb Democratic Party (SDS) and by Milosevic's Serbia. War and genocide followed. The Dayton accords put an end to the 3 1/2 years of the Bosnian War, one of the wars hitting former Yugoslavia, setting Bosnia and Herzegovina and, with it, the entire western Balkans region on an eventual path towards European integration.

The digital workshop will enable participants to design their training activity, packaging knowledge, skills and values, in a successful and coherent manner. In particular, participants will:

- explore the key stages of the training cycle;
- exhaustively investigate the needs of their future participants, included their learning styles
- formulate appropriate and reachable learning objectives
- outline the contents for their training activity
- design an innovative and participatory learning and evaluation strategy for their training
- finalize their learner-centered training design

The 20th edition of the joint ETUC and ETUI yearly publication Benchmarking Working Europe has been released. The Covid-19 pandemic and the ensuing economic recession offers the crudest and harshest of “stress tests” to probe the ability and willingness of the EU to emerge from this new crisis without repeating some of the mistakes of the past. Without the pandemic the report would have continued to dissect the variety of EU economic policies and benchmark their effects against the needs and the living conditions of European workers. Instead, this 20th anniversary issue of the Benchmarking report explores the challenges posed by the pandemic on both European economies and the world of work - challenges such as unemployment, rising public debt, shortages in the health and care sectors - and sets out the case for a socially responsible and ecologically sustainable road out of the Covid-19 crisis. Key elements in this strategy are the need for unprecedented levels of public spending, the acknowledgement of the redistributive function of decent working conditions and fair wages, and last but not least the recognition of industrial democracy as a key pillar for the current recovery strategy. All those aspects need to be developed and reconciled with the overarching priority of a just transition to a green economy, which is undoubtedly the greatest challenge that Europe needs to embrace in the years to come.

The present material serves to raise awareness on the reality of platform work among national trade union organizations. The ETUI initiative responds to the identified training needs for a common approach to development of this topic at EU level, based on proposals expressed by the ETUC’s member organizations. The ETUI’s choice of the pedagogical design of this training material reflects the different trade union education needs/approaches existing in the affiliated organizations. The proposed programs have been structured in a general concept.

It is about opportunities and social protection. It is about an economy that cares not only for GDP, but also for the well-being of Europeans.

This publication focuses on practices in the labour market integration of asylum seekers and refugees in the main EU reception states in the post-2015 period. It takes a comparative approach highlighting areas of good practice across the countries while also examining integration barriers. A lack of co-ordinated action and solidarity at European level, more restrictive national policies due to political tailwinds and institutional barriers are key factors why member states have been unable to capitalise on the generally favourable labour market situation.

It is still remarkable that many of them have achieved faster labour market integration for refugees than in previous periods of immigration. At the same time, with hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers still
in limbo, with limited rights and in vulnerable situations (either waiting for a final decision or having been rejected), Europe faces a humanitarian crisis within its borders.