Brussels, 17/05/2000 (Agence Europe) - Gathered last 11 May in Lisbon, the directors committee of the European Managers Confederation (CEC) defined the guidelines of the position that the CEC will present in the next negotiations on temporary work, to which it will participate alongside the European Trade union Confederation (ETUC). European employers having recently given its approval to enter into negotiations on this issue, a first meeting should take place at the start of June. The European social partners have nine months to reach an agreement on this sensitive issue. Commenting on the CEC's point of view, it Secretary General Claude Cambus formulated the three following remarks:
1. Temporary work is not a form of work in which managers are the most involved. Only a minority of them use these types of contracts. Though the managers often deal with people who work under temporary contracts;
2. Temporary work is one of the useful forms to deal with temporary fluctuations in work, but it must be contained to a certain number of specific cases (for example, to replace a full-time employee) or to deal with a momentary overload for a given company (for example, when a company receives a export order that only takes it three months),
3. In temporary work there are three actors; the employee, the temping company and the client company. This implies two types of contracts: one work contract between the employee and the temping company and a commercial contract between the latter and the client company. Thus they must ensure that, in the client company, compared to the temping company normal employee rights are in place (including the right of the informing-consultation of the worker) and that the latter is legally covered between two jobs;
4. In certain cases temporary work must be banned, for example when the work offered has an obviously dangerous aspect for the workers or for the environment (for example in the chemical sector). The training and knowledge are key elements here that must be taken into account.
Either way, work contracts of undetermined duration must remain the general rule, concluded the CEC Secretary General.
The Directors Committee of the CEC also discussed the Charter of Fundamental Rights: for the CEC, it must contain a chapter dedicated to economic and social rights such as the right to information, to consultation and participation in the companies and must be incorporated into the European Treaty so as to give the new right a legal basis.