Brussels, 24/11/2006 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission's Green Paper on modernising labour law, presented on 22 November by Vladimir Spidla, has been generally well received by MEPs, but the reaction of the employers has been less enthusiastic (see EUROPE 9312).
In the European Parliament, Danish Social Democrat Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, leader of the Party of European Socialists (PES), said in a press release, “Europe's social democratic parties welcome the chance to discuss new basic employment rights - the so-called 'floor of rights' proposed by Commissioner Spidla”. The former Danish Prime Minister explained, “New laws are needed to deal with today's new realities. Work has evolved but labour law has not evolved with it. The job for life is finished, it is industrial history. Today people need to change jobs ever more frequently. Unfortunately, the result for many workers is precarious employment conditions, and a new insecurity, which is tough for family life and too often prevents people from developing new skills”. German Green MEP Elisabeth Schroedter was more guarded, and warned against wrongly interpreting the Commission's initiative. The “transposition of the Danish model” suggested by the Commission must not result only in the flexibility advocated by employers, she argued, pointing out that the Danish model does not provide notice of redundancy, “but does provide support for the unemployed and relatively successful help to find alternative employment”.
European employers, indeed, stress flexibility. UNICE said in a press release, that this was “the only way to create more jobs” and strongly opposed any EU-wide definition of “worker”. UNICE President Ernest-Antoine Seillière, remained critical: the European Commission had made efforts (under pressure from European employers, who had been severe in their criticism of the Commission's first, and later re-worked, draft: Ed.) “to make the Green Paper more balanced. However, the text is still too focussed on how to preserve existing employment instead of looking for ways to facilitate the creation of more new jobs through increased labour market flexibility”. UEAPME, which represents 11 million small and medium-sized enterprises with 50 million employees, was markedly more positive. Its Director for Social Affairs and Employment Policy Liliane Volozinskis said the Green Paper “is now based on a reasonable approach …, for instance as far as hybrid and new forms of work are concerned”. In addition, it specifically deals with SME-related issues. However, like UNICE, the organisation warns that “the crucial decisions on how to modernise labour law in Europe will be taken at Member State level. The Forum for Private Business, representing approximately 25,000 UK-based businesses which employ over 600,000 people, and is the UK's only full member of UEAPME, was quite negative in its reaction, and its leader Nick Goulding said in a press release that the Commission's ideas ignored the reality of many working relationships and “would seriously restrict the ability of businesses in certain sectors from taking advantage of flexible working arrangements”.
The questions asked by the European Commission were moving in the right direction, raising important problems like cost/profits, said the European Centre of Enterprises with Public Participation and of Enterprises of General Economic Interest (CEEP), whose Secretary General is Rainer Plassman, in a press release. It immediately added that it re-affirmed, as it had done throughout the drafting of this long-awaited text, that the instrument and the procedures used were not appropriate. For the CEEP, 80% of the issues raised fell within the direct domain of the social partners who ought to have been adequately and separately consulted.
Among those satisfied with the Commission's text, Eurociett, which brings together 24 national federations of private employment agencies, was pleased that the Green paper acknowledged the very useful function of temporary work agencies, which help to increase labour market flexibility and fluidity, while at the same time providing employment security, it said in a press release. Eurociett President Annemarie Muntz said that “it will be essential to modernise national labour law to take fully account of the stepping-stone function of the temporary agency work industry by lifting unjustified restrictions faced by the industry in Europe”. (mg)