The Mission: A Social Europe that works
of
LOW
of
FES/LOW
Contact
Matthias Weber
What is the challenge?
- With digitalisation, decarbonisation, and the arrival of AI, the workplace is changing fast, and workers need to upskill or retrain if they are to keep up.
- Europe has a growing number of mobile and migrant workers — especially in the construction, transport, agricultural and hospitality sectors — that are vulnerable to exploitation and ‘social dumping’.
- Income inequality in Europe is also becoming ever starker, with great knock-on costs economically, socially, and politically.
- Digitalisation and working from home have blurred the boundaries between work and home life.
What is the solution?
This mission is to ensure that Europeans have decent livelihoods by:
- Promoting access to further training and qualifications — such as through an Erasmus+ program for workers — and by implementing job security councils, already present in Denmark, to assist with reskilling sector by sector, and also by providing sufficient social security to underpin any transition.
- Increasing the minimum wage to a living wage and strengthening the collective bargaining system.
- Ensuring that Europeans are socially secure in whichever country they work with a European Social Security Pass.
- Introducing a 32-hour, 4-day working week and the ‘right to disconnect.’
How would this mission benefit Europeans?
- Decent work improves living standards, provides a sense of dignity, and ensures workers’ social inclusion.
- It also raises productivity and strengthens social cohesion.
- EU-wide policies to reduce poverty and empower social cohesion would become a point of reference for the European identity – something of which we can be proud.