Workers who benefit from collective bargaining enjoy up to two weeks extra paid holiday per year, an analysis of EU data for the ETUC has found as millions prepare to return to work after the summer break. Ten more days holiday on top of the legal minimum is enjoyed by German and Croatian workers whose working conditions are set through negotiations by trade unions and employers. 

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recently issued a very worrying report on climate change, tracing fingerprints of manmade pollution across the changing climate. The reports clearly shows “that every fraction of warming makes the planet less safe – and that every bit of action contributes to a safer future.”

The global trade union movement has lost one of its giants with the passing of AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka.

Workers receiving poverty-level pay are among 35 million of the poorest Europeans who can’t afford a summer holiday, ETUC research has found amid the campaign to strengthen the EU’s wages directive. While access to holidays has grown over the last decade, the majority of low income families remain excluded. Overall, 28% of EU citizens can’t afford a one week holiday away from home – but that rises to 59.5 for people whose income is below the at-risk-of-poverty threshold (60% of the median).

The European Commission’s proposal to make working people foot the cost of the green transition by raising the price of petrol and household energy risks creating a Gilets Jaunes-style backlash against urgently-needed climate action. Workers facing an increasing frequency and intensity of extreme weather events know better than anyone the need to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, so European trade unions support the more ambitious climate action contained in the Fit for 55 package launched today.

The ETUC is backing calls by Belgian unions for undocumented migrants to be given work permits in a bid to end a hunger strike by more than 400 people in Brussels. The group of undocumented migrants, many of whom have been forced to work in the shadow economy for up to a decade, began the action on May 23 to highlight their request for regularisation and their condition is deteriorating rapidly as it enters a fourth week.

Minister, Vice President, Commissioner, Ministers, colleagues of social partners and social platform, Managing the COVID Emergency was essential to protect jobs and businesses and make our labor market resilient. Now that we are getting out of the pandemic, we need to bridge the gap before recovery starts, in order to avoid an explosion of unemployment. Emergency measures to protect jobs, wages and working conditions, and to strengthen social protection systems must be continued for all the time necessary.

The European economy is set to recover faster than expected from the Covid crisis thanks to higher EU and national government spending, according to the summer economic forecast published today by the European Commission. According to the European Commission: EU GDP is on course to return to pre-pandemic levels later this year thanks to growth of 4.8%, which is 0.6% higher than projected in the Commission’s spring forecast.  The European Commission explained:

A group of Romanian trade unionists have today completed a four-day rolling protest between Bucharest and Brussels over the low wages forcing their fellow citizens to make similar journeys to find decent work. The “Caravan of Social Rights” made up of 13 members of the Cartel Alfa trade union set off on the journey of over 2,000 kilometres on Friday, stopping in Budapest, Vienna, Munich and Luxembourg along the way to stage protests outside Romanian embassies with the support of local trade unions. 

Dear Readers, We have just published the Summer 2021 edition of the ETUC newsletter. To read the document, please click here. Enjoy!

Trade unions are calling on the European Commission to name a date for the promised directive on corporate responsibility as a new report reveals rising levels of abuse in workplaces across the world. Attacks on civil liberties like arbitrary arrests and detention of workers, along with limits on the right to assembly or to join a trade union, have reached an eight year high during the pandemic, according to the new Global Rights Index released today by the International Trade Union Confederation.

The European Commission has today joined trade unions in calling on member states to address health and safety failures putting workers’ lives at risk – but stopped short of taking real action themselves. 

Treaty change must be on the table in the Conference of the Future of Europe if the process is to have a meaningful outcome, ETUC General Secretary Luca Visentini has warned EU leaders today. Speaking at a high-level ETUC event on the conference alongside its executive board co-chairs Guy Verhofstadt and Ana Paula Zacarias, Visentini said it must move past institutional “process” which has caused delays and focus on delivering “ambitious content” that can reconnect Europe with working people.