Episode 16 – How did Europe treat its essential workers?

Mary: Good morning everyone and welcome to this edition of Eurofound’s podcast series: Eurofound Talks. Today, Eurofound talks ‘essential workers’.

It seems some time ago, but COVID-19 threw up a new perspective on workers that were at the frontline when it came to dealing with the effective support and functioning of our societies. These were what we call ‘essential workers’ - essential workers that were involved in the healthcare sector, long term care, water supply, energy supply, food supply, waste treatment, refuse collection, etc. There were a wide range of activities that required face-to-face contact and these workers continue to work during the COVID-19 pandemic on behalf of us all to maintain society and ensure that we continued to function. These workers have been referred to by us as ‘essential’ or ‘key’ or ‘critical’ workers, and we'll talk a little bit about that later on. Their occupations were wide-ranging, and again, we'll delve into that a little bit more and their backgrounds certainly were diverse, so this is not a homogeneous group that we are referring to here. But across Europe, we certainly stood out on our doorsteps and clapped them for their work. We applauded them. We were deeply appreciative of what their contribution had been to us during that critical time in all of our lives. As time has gone on and the COVID-19 pandemic has subsided, we want to come back a little bit to what were the lives for essential workers during this period in time and also now, have we adapted to their needs? Have we taken on board more than the applause on the doorsteps? Have we taken on board their requirements to do these jobs in a good quality context?

And I have an expert here today: we're joined by Jorge Cabrita who is the author of a new Eurofound study on the job quality of essential workers, and he's been working on this since COVID-19 took hold of us back in 2020. You're very welcome, Jorge.

Let's start by just setting the scene and getting the terminology right. For example, ‘critical’, ‘key’, ‘essential workers’: Who are they? Where can we find them? And I suppose you know, are they the same?

Jorge: That's a very good question. So, the first thing that I think I should mention here is that this is kind of still an open debate, right? So, there is no agreed definition of critical, essential or key workers. Different organisations have done research on the topic. There are different documents which try to approach this group of workers, but there's no agreed definition. So, we have to find our own way to try to define them and to identify them in our data. So, what we did was we tried to find out what were the lists of occupations or sectors considered as ‘essential’ or ‘critical’ in the different (EU) member states and, on the basis of that, we identified critical occupations and critical sectors and for us a critical worker would be someone who would be in an occupation considered as critical and in a sector considered as critical. So, for instance, if you are a doctor but you are working in a non-critical sector such as manufacturing, you'd be excluded from our analysis.

We try to find a meaningful way to do this, and this includes all sorts of occupations from, let's say, less skilled occupations such as cleaners or waste treatment workers, to legislators, top managers, ICT engineers, doctors and these kind of occupations.

Mary: So a broad range?

Jorge: Very broad! It’s a very heterogeneous group and for that reason we have to split it into meaningful groups and we did that by identifying eleven meaningful groups. Based on the information that we had, we break them down again into, let's say, occupational groups. And that includes health workers, care workers, education workers, transport workers, etc.

Mary: And if we bring all of those eleven groups together, what numbers are we talking about? What percentage?

Jorge: We are talking about 45% of our workforce in the European Union. It's a huge group.

Mary: So it's huge – it's not something for us to ignore.

Jorge: It's not. No, we cannot. This varies by country, but we are talking about… so the smaller share is in Cyprus where we are talking about 38%. And in some countries, for instance in Denmark, Latvia and Luxembourg, we're talking about 50% plus of the workforce in those countries.

Mary: Even though you've made the point – and it's very clear – that this is a heterogeneous group of people, we often think about the health and care workers when we talk about the essential workers, particularly when we are talking about the COVID-19 pandemic. When we talk about them specifically, what is their job quality like?

Jorge: What was very clear through the data from the Working condition survey of 2021, a large share of this group is actually in what we call ‘strained jobs’, which means it's a situation in which they have larger demands than the job resources at their disposal: they are under pressure and this can have a negative impact on their health. We are talking about half of the health and care workers, which is a big share of this group in itself.

Mary: So half of the care and health workers in the European Union are experiencing strain in their work. Again, not something to ignore.

Jorge: We cannot ignore that, of course not, and this is especially even more worrying because if you compare that with the European average of the overall workforce – 30% of workers in strained jobs – this is a much larger share.

Mary: And Jorge, that would have been the case prior to the pandemic also – I assume, when you're working in the care sector in the health sector to some degree – but has that increased or was it exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic?

Jorge: We believe that share of workers in strained jobs in this group would not have been very different. What happened was that there was a kind of an increase, an exacerbation, of some of the things that they were exposed to. So for instance, work intensity increased a lot during the pandemic for obvious reasons, right? So there's a number of things that have been exacerbated, but we believe and we actually followed up our research (the empirical data) with interviews of people in the sector – social partner representatives for example – and they confirmed that to us. So some of these issues were there before they were made visible by the pandemic.

Cleaners and refuse workers were also a group with relatively poor job quality. The main thing among these workers is that they were subject to very high physical demands and to high job insecurity as well, so there was a kind of a complementarity between these two things. They also reported poor support from colleagues and managers, for instance, so they were kind of isolated, or working in isolation. They had poor access to training and learning, for instance, limited opportunities for career development. And also a large share of these workers reported difficulty in making ends meet i.e. to be able to pay their expenses.

Mary: Because these would be considered minimum wage workers to a large degree?

Jorge: Most of them, yes.

Mary: And when we talk about job insecurity, they were fearful that they would lose their job over the next period of time..

Jorge: That's correct.

Mary: And you think that that was also exacerbated by the crisis situation we were going through?

Jorge: Not in this group, no. So this was kind of a characteristic that was even there before the pandemic. And it was not exacerbated greatly by the pandemic because they were fortunate enough, let's say, to continue to work.

Mary: OK. But to come back again to the to these workers, I mean, there's an awful lot of discussion these days about telework and teleworkable jobs and the change in the way that we work into the future, etc. But ultimately, we're really only talking about a third of all jobs that are teleworkable, across the European Union and these jobs clearly are not.

Jorge: Actually within our groups, some of them are teleworkable. The most obvious examples are the ICT workers, office workers, which were part of our analysis as well. So if you think about people working in public administration – and they were the ones ensuring that people were getting their social benefits paid, for instance – at least some of them were able to work from home, so they were exposed to a different kind of setting. So they were more protected, if you wish than let's say, health workers.

Mary: But again, to come back to it, ultimately those that we consider at the top level, if you like, of ‘essential workers’ – those who are really at the frontline – these are not teleworkable jobs…

Jorge: Most of these are not, yeah. So those are those people that need to go to their workplace: transport workers, drivers, for instance, doctors, nurses, cleaners, people working (as) engineers, mechanics, electricians, people ensuring that we have access to water, electricity, internet, those are frontline workers.

Mary: I suppose the danger there is that, as we move towards this narrative that telework is the future and that hybrid working is what we're looking towards, the danger is that we see inequalities emerging in that area in the sense that these workers will not be able to, I suppose, assume those benefits of a hybrid working lifestyle.

Jorge: Well, from at least from the conversations that I have with people in those occupations, that is not a problem for them because they were never able to telework, so it's not even an issue. But the fact is that given another situation of pandemic, for instance, or lockdown, some of them will be more exposed to a virus, for instance, than those that can work from home, and that's a clearly different situation.

Mary: And do we see when it comes to – because you talk there about health and care workers and I don't want to just focus on them because, as you say, it is a very heterogeneous group and there are IT workers and others also – but when it comes to health and care, we know that there is a very kind of skewed bias there in terms of more women in those particular sectors. So can you talk to me a little bit about the gender discrepancies across the board when it comes to essential workers?

Jorge: So in our policy brief, we clearly show that there is a huge variety of gender distribution among the different groups and we have two groups which are predominantly female and those are the healthcare workers and education workers – traditionally that's the case. And then on the other extreme you have, for instance, transport workers or ICT workers, and those are clearly male-dominated occupations, scientists and engineers as well, that's another group which is predominantly male. So overall, it's kind of more or less balanced: if you take them altogether, 48% of them are women. But when you look at the specific groups, you'll see big discrepancies and this means that obviously, men and women will be impacted differently in their jobs according to the exposure they have to different risks.

Mary: And would it be fair to say then, Jorge from your findings that in fact more women are exposed to, for example, as you said there, the virus itself?

Jorge: Yes, that's correct. Because for the simple fact that they are predominantly in the healthcare sector in the frontline.

Mary: So I suppose women are more on the frontline than men in these particular circumstances, correct?

Jorge: That that's correct, yeah. If you take the example of cleaners as well, cleaners and waste workers is a group that you can split in two; so cleaners themselves are predominantly female but then if the rest of the group is composed by supervisors – people with a more managerial type of (role) – that's predominantly male-dominated. So again, this is proof that in terms of being more exposed to the virus itself during the pandemic, women were more exposed than men.

Mary: We're not going to go down all the rabbit holes that we possibly could on this subject because it has so many dimensions, but that has an impact then on the care that these women have for their own children and the work-life balance issues that they're encountering in these circumstances. And if they get sick, this has a knock-on effect for society disproportionately, if it's women who are at the coalface.

Jorge: Obviously, yeah. And that was felt during the pandemic actually. So one of the main problems faced by these workers during the pandemic and during the lockdowns was children having to stay at home and someone having to look after them. And in many countries there were exceptions for these workers, in which they opened creches and education centres and places where children could stay when their mothers and fathers would need to go to the hospital or to the frontline to deal with the pandemic.

Mary: So clearly another lesson learned during the pandemic as to how we could put something in place into the future to address the kind of challenges or crisis that could come down the line from a gender perspective.

Jorge: I think there's a big lesson there. Yes, obviously.

Mary: And when we talk about, you know, the public applause and adulation that we had for these essential workers – and again I think a lot of it was addressed to the health and care workers because they were so obvious to us  – but in terms of their working conditions, we've explored a little bit what we're looking at there in those sectors, but have they improved? Have we seen changes since the pandemic?

Jorge: Well, here I would like to start by saying that we tried to look at some of the measures that have been implemented in the Member States in order to improve or at least maintain the working conditions of these workers, and most of the things that we've seen implemented were temporary. So you have bonuses, for instance, based to nurses and doctors; you had specific recognition of COVID-19 as an occupational disease, for example, for some of the workers. But these were things that were either temporary or kind of addressing only parts of the problem – the problems associated to their relatively poor working condition.

But to reply to your question if the working conditions improved, what we can say and from what we see is that they have not improved yet. So on the one hand working conditions take a long time to change – and we see that in our data – and at the same time we have talked, and we have listened, to social partners in some of these sectors. Last week, for instance, we were in an event with colleagues from ILO (International Labour Organization) we had Commissioner Schmidt present as well, we had the Vice Chair of the Employment Committee from the European Parliament, and some of these social partner representatives were saying and complaining: “look, the working conditions are not ideal. We still need to improve some of these things”. That's a clear message that no, their working conditions have not improved since.

Mary: But Jorge is that not a fundamentally critical priority issue that we have to address? Because we know also that there are huge labour shortages across the European Union and many of these sectors that actually were directly applicable to the essential workers. How will that impact in the long term if we don't address the working conditions aspect of these sectors?

Jorge: I believe that that's the main message of our research is exactly: that one way of preparing our societies and the way that we are trying to become more resilient – let's say to further crises or further future pandemics – it's exactly to deal with the job quality, or rather the poor job quality of everyone. So what we are saying here is that, if we want to make these jobs more attractive, if we want to make these jobs more sustainable in the sense that people are able and willing to continue to do those jobs for a longer period of time, then we have to improve their job quality. And this is not just for the essential workers, it's for everyone. But if we want to be prepared for the next pandemic, we should look in specifically at the essential workers.

Mary: Sure, and that's not a simple initiative clearly, because as you said at the start, we're dealing with different groups of people in different sectors at different levels, so one size does not fit all; there's not one policy measure for these working condition improvements that would apply to everyone in the same way.

Jorge: No, because the different groups present different needs, right? So they would have to be tackled individually, and that's why sectoral approach, for instance, would be a clever one. We have social dialogue at sectoral level. Actually we already received feedback from our research from some of the sectoral social dialogue committees, which exist at the European level, and they are very happy to see… to have a better picture of the job quality of workers in their sectors and they are going to act upon that. So they are going to use this to reinforce their, let's say, diagnosis of the problems that they face in the sector and use that as a way of opening up and finding, you know, what are the next things that they should tackle in their different sectors. So there's no blanket solution for everyone except saying that we have to ensure that everybody has access to good job quality. But this is very general.

Mary: Clearly we want upward convergence in terms of working conditions in general, but here specifically we're looking at a differentiated approach. So whereas pay might work in one particular sector, it's maybe working time, or work intensity or health and safety that might work in different other areas, or a combination.

And in terms of that, we've gone through the various issues that that apply to the essential workers. We know that we're going to have to address job quality not just for the workers who are there at the moment, but as you say, to prepare us well for the future when we're looking at other crises that may come down the road, and clearly we've been dealing with crises nonstop since the early 2000s. So I think when we look at this and we were looking at policymakers, what do you think – because at the end of these, we always look at what we could say to a policymaker – if you had them in an elevator and if you had three things (if you were to ‘talk to me in 3’ Jorge) what would they be?

Jorge: I would go back to the need to improve job quality for everyone, to make this a priority. To promote or to support governments in monitoring job quality of the workers in their countries for instance. We try to do that with our working conditions survey, but I think it's we have to go further than that and go specific and look at the situation at the national level, which unfortunately our survey does not allow. So that would be the first thing I would tell them. We have to look into the job quality of these workers and, if we want to improve it, there is a very simple way of doing it: it's either reducing job demands or increasing their job resources and to do these things. It's not necessarily costly; people usually think ‘oh, that's very expensive to implement’ or ‘where do you get the money?’

As an example, in terms of job resource, the support by managers and colleagues, is something that doesn't cost anything. But if you promote it and if people report having that kind of support, this has a very positive impact in terms of their motivation and engagement and their health and well-being as well. So this is a simple example of something that can be promoted, let's say, across the board in our companies and organisations in general.

A second point, a second thing that I would tell them is that we need to develop sustainable work practises. So job quality is the first element, let's say, of sustainable work practise – and by ‘sustainable’ here I'm referring to the conditions under which people are able and willing to continue to work, to extend their professional lives, if you wish – and here we have to first of all ensure that their work is properly valued in social terms. Because, as we have seen, these essential workers have a specific social value: they allowed our societies to continue to function. So their pay, for instance, should be proportional to that value, right? And the fact as we have already mentioned here is that many of these workers are still paid very low, or even the minimum wage only, which is not enough for them to sometimes face their expenses. So that would be one first thing, but we can also think about ensuring that these workers have access to representation. So either through unions or employee representatives at the workplace. This is a crucial aspect as well because people, by themselves, they are not able to negotiate their working conditions, so they need someone to negotiate collectively the working conditions that they are exposed to. And then finally it would be also important to promote workers’ work-life balance and (how) to adjust that work life balance to their personal circumstances. As we have seen, especially because women have this kind of predominant role in looking after children or other people in their families, we have to create the conditions for those people to be able to do their paid work properly without big worries, let's say. So that's another thing that we have to bear in mind there when we're talking about sustainable work.

And finally, the third Point that I would underline to the policymaker our policy in the elevator would be to address the gender stereotypes, because as we see some of these groups are kind of, you know, completely biased in terms of in terms of gender distribution. There's clearly a need there that would be beneficial for everyone to even out these groups a little bit more so that you make use of your whole population – everybody that is willing and able to work can work in any occupation and not reserve those occupations just for men or for women.

Mary: And that links back into your work-life balance, to a large degree, because when we're linking into that the gender dimension – we talked about that earlier and how they are interconnected – but I suppose you're overarching input here, Jorge, is really about the job quality and the working conditions and improving them across the board, and it really is across the board. I mean, we didn't talk very much today about teachers, but I'm assuming they are also part of this essential work.

Jorge: They are, yeah

Mary: And I mean there, when you talk about social recognition, it's a job for society at large to do, isn't it? To recognise the people that are really playing these critical roles.

Jorge: It is. And it's a group which has their own challenges as well. So they are not too far away from the European average in terms of job strength, for instance, or job quality. They don't have a job quality as poor as the health workers or the cleaners or protective services workers. But they have their own challenges as well and we have to look into those things and certainly try to improve it.

Mary: So it's interesting from what you're saying as well is that this managerial support – or the support of the context, the framework of the workplace – is very important to workers, but so is societal support. It's an understanding of where these essential workers play this critical role.

Jorge: Well, we are talking about two different things there, I believe.

At the workplace, yes, the managerial side of it is crucial because usually that's where you define how work is organised. And because being, let's say, a nurse in one hospital is not the same thing as being a nurse in a different hospital because things are organised in a different way. So management and the way work is organised is different from workplace to workplace, so the participation of workers in how their work is organised is a very important one.

The other aspect which you mentioned, that's the macro level and it's the social value that we attribute to these occupations. And here for instance, let's say the silver lining for the cleaners and waste management workers was that they become more visible because in the past we didn't talk much about these workers, right? But they are essential for us. They ensure that our offices are clean, our schools are clean, our hospitals are clean. But the value that we gave to them was kind of perhaps lower than it should have been, right? And that was reflected in the way that they were paid, how much they were paid, many of them in minimum wage jobs. So that's certainly something that we have to promote. But that's a societal change, it's a collective one, so it's difficult.

Mary: It's a cultural dimension as well because it's also linked to the gender, because necessarily over the over the past hundreds of years jobs that are associated with women are perhaps not considered to be as valuable as jobs that are mostly carried out by men. But that's another conversation for another day! And I’ll happily have that conversation another day about gender in the workplace, Jorge.

But again, thank you very much. You have been a Eurofound Talks participant and contributor previously and it is always a pleasure to work with Jorge. I would ask anyone who's interested in the particular topic we've talked about today to read the recent policy brief which Jorge referenced earlier, but also the results from our European working conditions Telephone survey, which came out recently. You can find that all on our website and you'll be able to explore the data yourselves and be able to delve deeper into the information that is available.

Also, please feel free to look at any of the other related topics which we have, for example on gender equality, on job quality, on sustainable work that as Jorge mentioned earlier, work-life balance and so much more. You can find all that information on our Eurofound website. You can follow us also on our social media channels. And of course you can download all our other podcasts on Spotify or wherever else you access your podcasts. So, until the next time when Eurofound Talks to you.