Thousands of jobs rely on a swift implementation of the Clean Industrial Deal (CID), announced today by the European Commission. The ETUC is calling for the measures focussed on workers to be urgently brought forward.
An average of 500 jobs a day are being lost and even more threatened. Just transition measures are urgently needed to save those jobs and must be moved to the top of the list, not left as an add-on to be implemented at the end of the year.
Rapid intervention when there is a threat of restructuring and measures to anticipate change are needed now and delaying them until December, as the deal suggests, would be too late.
Investments for quality jobs
The current situation of crisis calls for an exceptional wave of investments including a SURE 2.0 mechanism. Social conditionalities must apply so that workers benefit from the support to industry, including to promote collective bargaining.
Skills training is needed but the ETUC warns that the measures proposed in the Clean Industrial Deal won’t be available to workers without ensuring workers have a right to training during working hours and without cost to them.
These measures presented by Vice President Ribera today will be a major step forward when implemented and are a response to workers who have been taking action to raise the need for urgent action, including the demonstration by industrial workers and their European trade union federation IndustriAll Europe, which was decisive in changing the dial.
ETUC General Secretary Esther Lynch said:
“Europe is at a crucial juncture with hundreds of thousands of jobs depending on the decisions and steps that will be put in place following the publishing of the Clean Industrial Deal today.
“For working people there is no time to waste. Many of the jobs that these measures aim to save will no longer exist if we delay action until December. We call for all focus on workers to be treated not as an added extra but as a structural feature with the same level of urgency as the rest of the deal.
“Extraordinary investments are needed. Companies who benefit from the investment must be required to ensure a plan for the workforce - a plan negotiated with trade unions - that protects and creates quality jobs and that takes into account employment and skills needs along with the training during working time so that workers can realistically access up-skilling or reskilling.”
ETUC Confederal Secretary Ludovic Voet:
“Moving to clean industry and energy independence requires us to massively scale up the renewable energy sources needed to power it and to invest in a skilled workforce.
“A massive scale up of investments is needed to compete with stronger global players on industrial policy. We must scale up public investment in renewables and bring in a Just Transition Directive.”
“We need to stop lurching from one crisis to the next and instead proactively plan and manage a transition that delivers for both workers and their companies.”
