Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-02-14-Speech-3-310"
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"en.20070214.22.3-310"2
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"Mr President, we cannot afford to be complacent that the unemployment rate is currently reduced. The Lisbon Strategy calls for both more and better quality jobs. Currently, the concept of ‘flexicurity’ is seen as a threat by many millions of our fellow citizens. It means for them and their families ever-greater insecurity. The Commission’s proposal on the employment guidelines notes this, saying: ‘a more comprehensive approach is necessary, better combining flexibility and security’. That is often repeated, but in reality things are getting worse, not better.
In its Green Paper on modernising labour law, the Commission highlights some of the issues ‘through non-standard contracts, businesses seek to remain competitive in the global economy by avoiding the cost of compliance with employment protection, notice periods and the cost of social security contributions’. That does not sound to me like the path toward competing through quality and high added value in a globalised world.
The Commission also notes that fixed-term, part-time, on-call and zero-hour contracts, contracts for workers from temporary employment agencies, freelance contracts, etc. have become an established feature of European labour markets. It notes that they are on the increase, up 4% between 2001 and 2005, and show that a significant minority, round about 16%, remain trapped in a succession of short-term low-quality jobs, with inadequate social protection.
Thankfully, we now have directives covering part-time and fixed-term contract workers. But those initiatives date from a time when the Commission still believed it had a role to play in establishing minimum standards, when it believed in using the legal bases available to it. But what about those other proliferating forms of insecure, low-paid, low-quality, atypical jobs? The best the Commission can do nowadays is to ask a series of rhetorical questions in its Green Paper on how to rebalance ‘flexicurity’.
Well, maybe it is time the Commission returned to a social agenda with legislative content; a signal is desperately needed to the Member States."@en1
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