The European Commission is wrong to celebrate a “remarkably resilient” labour market at a time when tens of thousands of workers are threatened with redundancies.
The Commission made the claim in its proposal for a Joint Employment Report (JER), published today as part of the European Semester Autumn Package.
But the statistics that the upbeat assessment is based on don’t take into account the wave of forced redundancies being made in sectors ranging from the car industry to banking:
| Company | Country | N° of jobs at risk |
| Thyssenkrupp | Germany | 11000 |
| Volkswagen | Germany | 10000 |
| Milee | France | 10000 |
| ArcelorMittal | Belgium | 5600 |
| Ford | Europe | 4000 |
| Audi | Belgium | 3000 |
| Auchan supermarket | France | 2400 |
| Klarna | Sweden & UK | 2000 |
| Northvolt | Sweden | 1600 |
| Vauxhall (Stellantis) | UK | 1100 |
The European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) is calling on EU leaders to wake-up to the growing jobs crisis and make the following measures a priority:
- A coherent and powerful industrial policy to deliver quality jobs and support our economy
- The establishment of a permanent investment mechanism to ensure public investment needed for public goods and to guarantee just transitions and quality jobs does not end with the RFF;
- A directive dedicated to ensuring there is a just transition thorough anticipation and management of change for workers in sectors and companies affected by the transitions, including the green and digital transitions;
- A moratorium on forced redundancies.
ETUC Confederal Secretary Ludovic Voet said:
“The Commission’s rosy assessment of the labour market bears no resemblance to the reality faced by tens of thousands of working people facing forced redundancies this Christmas.
“While these redundancies are still not captured in official statistics, the Commission only needs to look at the ongoing demonstrations over thousands of Audi job cuts on its doorstep to see the reality on the ground.
“In the detail of this report, there are some signs that the Commission is moving in the right direction on promoting fair pay and recognising the need for fair green and digital transitions.
“But it’s difficult to see how those aims will be made a reality until the EU has a fiscal framework that promotes investment and the Commission brings forward a just transition directive.
“Workers want to see the Commission recognising the imminent threat to their jobs and making it a priority to avoid redundancies, rather than trying to spin a happier story.
“That means ditching deregulation and austerity, and instead ensuring Europe has a proper industrial policy backed-up by a new permanent investment mechanism with social conditionalities to ensure that public money supports quality jobs and collective bargaining.”
