27.02.2024 Circular

* : ETUC considerations regarding proposal of Regulation on European labour market statistics for business

Brussels, 27 February 2024

To: Members of the Committee of the Permanent Representatives of the Governments of the Member States to the European Union

Dear Ambassadors,

As we prepare for the discussion at the upcoming meeting of COREPER I this week regarding the negotiation mandate with the European Parliament on the Regulation on European labour market statistics for business, ETUC would like to share its proposed amendments.

The justification for the regulation lies in the need for robust labour market statistics on businesses to support recent directives on adequate minimum wages and pay transparency. The current legal framework lacks data collection on the gender pay gap and does not cover significant actors in the EU economy, such as micro-firms.  

The approach chosen by the Commission provides for reporting obligations to micro-businesses for the structure of earnings survey (limited to collecting main information to limit the burden) but not for the labour cost survey. Gender pay-gap data collection is not made compulsory with this option. Additionally, the chosen option only collects variables on apprentices in countries where they represent more than 1% of all employees, though this is not clearly expressed i the legal body of the text.  

To address the shortcomings above-mentioned, ETUC could propose the following amendments:  

  • Article 4 on data requirements should encompass other elements providing information about the quality of employment, making the following requests mandatory under point 1: Time and duration of employment (standard employment vs. part-time and fixed-term contracts), social protection entitlements, and numbers of hours worked.  

  • Article 6 on statistical units and statistical population: Apprentices  and trainees should be included under point 1 as one "statistical unit." Points 4 and 5 should be removed, as they provide companies with derogations hindering the collection of relevant data on the gender pay gap.

Moreover, the frequency of the earnings survey, currently conducted every four years, should be increased to at least biennially.

We kindly request your consideration in incorporating the demands of the European trade union movement into the negotiation mandate for the European Council.

With best regards,

Tea Jarc
ETUC Confederal Secretary