Brussels, 03/03/2004
The European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) calls upon the Employment and Social Affairs Ministers Meeting on 4 March to stress the quality of work and the improvement of working conditions in the conclusions of the Spring Summit to be held on 25-26 March 2004.
“In order to restore the path of high productivity and high growth, Europe needs to put the quality of work and improvement of working conditions in the centre of policy making”, says John Monks, ETUC General Secretary.
The Lisbon strategy is off track on all three counts. Growth is low, employment rates are stalling instead of increasing and, importantly, the trend of labor productivity has broken down. In order to address and reverse this productivity slowdown, Europe needs to strengthen, not weaken, its social dimension by improving working conditions.
The ETUC calls upon the Employment and Social Affairs Ministers meeting on 4 March to underline this policy message and to insert it forcefully into the conclusions of the Spring Summit at the end of March.
Some indicators that testify to the link between quality of labor and productivity:
- Increasing the number of workers that have access to training by 1% results in an increase in productivity of 0.3%. At the same time, 50% of workers do not have access to training: mainly low skilled, elderly people but also women due to their high involvement in atypical work are excluded from training,
- Atypical working contracts may in some cases act as a springboard; in many other cases they may constitute ‘low productivity' traps. 39% of workers on a fixed term contract remain in the same situation after one year; 22% of workers fall back into inactivity,
- Temporary agency work in risk sectors results in a high number of working accidents, to the detriment of the future ‘employability' of these workers,
- With employment security as a key determinant of job satisfaction, introducing excessive flexibility will be counterproductive for the productivity of workers.