Brussels, 19/10/2007
- To complement job protection systems with employment security measures, thereby recognising that employment security can only be negotiated and secured if there is robust job protection.
- To tackle precarious work by improving job protection for vulnerable workers, not by making all contracts insecure.
- To review the design of labour law with a view to promoting stable employment contracts and relationships and sustainable labour market practice, instead of reducing the level of protection.
- To confirm that the letter as well as the spirit of the existing European social acquis should be respected, including the 1999 European framework agreement on fixed-term workers stipulating that open-ended contracts remain the general norm.
- To stress that, besides flexicurity, the European labour market also faces the challenges of drastically improving the quality of new jobs, creating more jobs through growth and job-friendly demand-side policies, and promoting and supporting an autonomous social dialogue and strong and representative social partners.
- To recognise that the European labour market is already very flexible and capable of destroying around 4% and creating 5-8% of new jobs every single year.
The core message of the joint analysis is that the social dimension of the internal market urgently needs to be strengthened. Loopholes in the design of labour law and job protection allowing employers to turn flexibility into precarious work need to be closed.
Says Joël Decaillon, Confederal Secretary of the ETUC: “Social Europe is too important to limit it to speeches for the general public. Business in Europe has no objective interest in a workforce that is increasingly insecure and forced to accept precarious contracts. Action to improve job protection and contractual arrangements needs to be taken, through both collective bargaining and labour law, at national and at European level.”
- Social partners' joint analysis