The European Federation for Family Employment (EFFE) will be holding a major congress in Brussels on 14 November to mark its tenth anniversary. For EFFE and its President, Marie-Béatrice Levaux, the aim will be to take stock of the successes achieved by the direct home employment sector and to look at how it can meet the challenges of an ageing population and growing needs, explains the President, who also chairs the French Federation of Household Employers (FEPEM). (Interview by Solenn Paulic)
Agence Europe - Do more Member States recognise home employment today than ten years ago?
Marie-Béatrice Levaux: There is a greater level of understanding, but more in some countries than in others; today, this direct home employment sector is well recognised in France and Italy, which are the only two countries to have collective agreements and sectoral social dialogue.
But in many countries, these home-based jobs remain largely undeclared, with all the risks this entails for social security entitlements.
In some countries, there is still the assumption that women can care for children and the elderly informally. And above all, there is no free choice for households between institutionalisation and staying at home.
So we want to make progress towards structuring home employment and towards public policies that simplify administration and recognise its economic importance.
In France, we represent 3.3 million private individuals who employ more than 1.3 million people in the home to meet their day-to-day needs, and we will need 800,000 new jobs between now and 2030-2035.
Recognising and enabling direct employment by households would also enable governments to make savings, as no state would have the resources to provide places in care facilities to meet these needs.
However, the EU does not seem to be making much headway.
The issues relating to remaining at home have not been grasped by European decision-makers. Giving people the opportunity to remain in their own homes, if they so wish, is a prerequisite for respecting their autonomy and their rights in general.
This is essential for their independence; otherwise, there is a risk that people in need of care will be seen as nothing more than a burden to be looked after.
Treating people as individuals must lie at the heart of the approach, enabling the people concerned to receive assistance in the environment of their choice, as they are best placed to make their own decisions. This is the way to guarantee high-quality care.
The EU needs to develop a roadmap for coordinated approaches to care that include the models and specificities of the homecare sector.
What are you doing to raise the profile of the sector at EU level?
Together with Marc Angel (S&D, Luxembourg), we have launched a European observatory on services to individuals and households.
The EFFE lab has produced an initial map of this sector, which accounts for 4% of total employment in the EU, or 10 million workers, of whom 3.5 million are undeclared and a further 2 million do not enjoy the same working conditions as other workers in the EU.
The aim is to share the various experiences. In Austria, a self-employment scheme has been introduced for these home-based jobs, but without the same working conditions as other workers. In Belgium, of course, there are service vouchers, but services for children and older people are not included in the scheme, so there are limits. The Latvian example is also interesting, combining needs in the home with the use of digital tools.
What we want is to push forward this ‘ecosystem’ approach, including administrative simplification, professionalisation and solvency, with the challenge of recognising formal and informal skills. We also need to take into account the dimension of legal migration and support for language acquisition.