Tag: labour

Opposition Labour leader Ed Miliband vowed on Monday (19 November) he would not let Britain sleepwalk towards exit from the European Union as Prime Minister David Cameron prepared for tough talks in Brussels this week on a renewal of the bloc's budget.

The labour market will not be the same in future. In the 21^st century we will witness the emergence of a wide variety of contractual employment arrangements and both policymakers and social partners will need to modernise labour laws to ensure legal certainty, writes Denis Pennel, managing director of the European Confederation of Private Employment Agencies (Eurociett), in an April paper.

Squeezed by the economic crisis, Europe's labour markets can find new dynamism through social innovation, said Vladimir Špidla, EU commissioner for employment, social affairs and equal opportunities, in an exclusive interview with EurActiv.

Female politicians in the UK do well in the European Parliament as it offers "the sort of politics women like to be associated with" and is "much more collegial, much more consensual and less confrontational 'ya-boo' boy politics of Westminster," the leader of the UK Labour delegation in the European Parliament, Glenis Willmott, told EurActiv in an interview.

An own-initiative report on flexicurity and labour law adopted by the European Parliament is mildly critical of the Commission's Communication on the matter, asking for indefinite employment contracts to be the norm.

The European Trade Union Confederation - ETUC - has strongly criticised the Parliament's draft report on the Commission's Green Paper 'Modernising labour law to meet the challenges of the 21^st century', declaring that it requires 'fundamental change'. In a position paper published on May 7, it states that Parliament offers a 'flawed' and 'over-simplified' analysis of the EU's labour-market problems.

Social NGOs from all over Europe have presented a nine-point catalogue of benchmarks that they will to use to evaluate the German presidency.

The final version of the Commission's Green Paper on labour law, to be presented by Commissioner Spidla on 22 November 2006, has a new title and most of its original questions up for consultation have been changed.

Shortly before the Commission's planned launch of a consultation on the reform of European labour law, employers' association UNICE launched a fierce attack on the document. EurActiv talked to Catelene Passchier, who is in charge of social policy and labour law in her position as confederal secretary of ETUC, the European Trade Union Confederation.

In reaction to a critical letter from the European business lobby, the Commission has delayed the publication of a Green Paper on European Labour law until at least November 2006.

Researchers of the Centre for Social and Economic Research (CASE) analyse the impact of tax wedges on employment and find that the consequences of tax wedge might be devastating for low-skilled labour.

In an economic environment marked by the rationalisation of workflows and by global competition, good macro-economic figures are a necessary condition for creating jobs, but not a sufficient one, experts at a Brussels conference agreed. 

The model of flexicurity - a combination of easy hiring and firing, high benefits for the unemployed and a pro-active labour market policy - could solve many of Europe's unemployment problems, experts at a conference agreed.