The Mission: A Social Europe that works

of LOW

of FES/LOW

Matthias Weber

matthias.weber(at)fes.de

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.

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.’

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.

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