European Trade Union Committee for Education

Trade union leaders from across Europe meeting in Brussels on 13-14 December 2017, at the occasion of the ETUC Executive Committee meeting, reaffirmed their commitment to quality jobs for all working people – and agreed that creating quality jobs should be a top priority for European economic policy.

In a ETUC press release published for the occasion, ETUCE Deputy General Secretary Katja Lehto-Komulainen said: “Employers have been taking advantage of the crisis by offering lower wages and worse working conditions, and now the European economy is recovering, policy-makers’ attention should shift to the quality of work.”

“We have to get over the desperate idea that any job is better than no job. Work has to offer a route to a decent life and dignity. Bad jobs have knock-on effects well beyond the workplace” She continued.

Trade union leaders today adopted today a definition of quality job based on:

Good wages Job security Life-long learning Safe and healthy workplace Reasonable working time Trade union representation

According to today’s decision, the ETUC, representing the European trade union movement as a whole, is to renew it efforts to raise this issue of job quality in EU economic policy making, in the context of the European Pillar of Social Rights, in the debates about digitalisation and online platforms, climate action and the future of work.

Commenting on the press statement, ETUCE European Director, Susan Flocken, said: “poor quality jobs and working conditions are a clear product of a decade of austerity economics, the weakening of social dialogue in nearly all European countries, and the increasing denial/obstruction of trade union rights, including limits on the scope of bargaining. Now, it is high time that the rhetoric around economic recovery translates into better work and quality jobs”.

“While facing privatisation pressures on one side,” she continued, “the education sector is challenged with a growth in the numbers of casualised teaching staff, short-term contracts and performance-based pay.”

“We join the ETUC call today exactly to denounce that low quality jobs in all sectors of education have negative consequences both for the individual workers and for the quality of education as a whole”.