Publications

​​​​​​​Despite the unusually tough economic and labour market conditions, most EU Member States made nominal and real increases to their minimum wages in 2020. This is what a first overview of recent minimum wage developments reveals. Some countries lived up to earlier promises or pre-agreements, while other countries strayed somewhat off their original path but still maintained the overall trend of increasing minimum wages in line with other wages. Although most countries were cautious in the level of increase granted, low inflation rates meant that the value of minimum wages still went up beyond rises in consumer prices. For the time being, at least, it can be concluded that the policy response in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic is distinct from the approach taken during the global financial crisis, when a greater number of countries moved quickly to freeze nominal minimum wages.

The employment fallout of COVID-19 has been a story of two types of service work. Office-based knowledge workers have largely kept their jobs and incomes while participating in the huge and apparently successful ad hoc social experiment in working from home. Client-facing service workers have borne the brunt of the lockdowns and the steep declines in demand for in-person services in restaurants, hotels, leisure and the arts. The upshot is that, unlike the ‘mancession’ following the global financial crisis, the first impacts of the pandemic have fallen disproportionately on low-paid female workers. But to see this in the statistics, we must start by looking beyond the unemployment rate.

La pandemia de COVID-19 ha tenido un gran impacto en la accesibilidad a la sanidad, la educación y los servicios asistenciales para todos los europeos. También para los niños y niñas, que en muchos países han visto como cerraban sus escuelas y las sustituían por el aprendizaje a distancia. Asimismo, han sufrido las consecuencias de la pandemia que han afectado al acceso de sus familias a los servicios sanitarios y a la salud mental de su entorno familiar. Muchas familias también han experimentado un aumento de la inseguridad en materia de vivienda.

Healthcare providers have been overwhelmed by the demand for COVID-19-related care. Medical appointments and treatments for other conditions have often been delayed, potentially leading to escalating health problems and greater future care needs among those who have missed out. If the pandemic leads to an economic crash, this rise in unmet medical needs could spiral, as happened during the last economic crisis – policymakers should take heed.

The COVID-19 pandemic compelled governments to take exceptional measures to monitor and control the spread of the Coronavirus. Among them was the introduction in most EU Member States of tracking apps to gather data on citizens who have contracted the virus and to trace their contacts, a measure that inevitably traded off privacy protection for effective infection prevention.

This study provides information allowing for an assessment of the representativeness of the actors involved in the European sectoral social dialogue committee for the local and regional government (LRG) sector, including social services. Their relative representativeness legitimises their right to be consulted, their role and effective participation in European sectoral social dialogue and their capacity to negotiate agreements.

Standard employment is not simply being replaced by non-standard work; employment is becoming more diverse, and policy must accordingly become more tailored. The last decade has seen much public and policy debate on the future of work. Standard employment – permanent, full-time and subject to labour law – is still dominant in Europe, and non-standard work, with the exception of part-time work, has been growing only to a rather limited extent. But it is acknowledged more and more that something is happening in the European labour market that is not transparent from the data, that this is of increasing importance, and that it is influencing the quality of work and employment.

Although standard employment (generally full-time and permanent) remains the dominant employment type across the EU, European labour markets are increasingly characterised by a variety of different forms. These new forms of employment involve new formal employment relationships or work patterns (linked to aspects such as place of work, working time or use of ICT) and sometimes both. This report puts the spotlight on nine innovative employment forms across the 27 EU Member States, Norway and the UK.

The long-term care (LTC) sector employs a growing share of workers in the EU and is experiencing increasing staff shortages. The LTC workforce is mainly female and a relatively large and increasing proportion is aged 50 years or older. Migrants are often concentrated in certain LTC jobs. This report maps the LTC workforce’s working conditions and the nature of employment and role of collective bargaining in the sector.

Como parte de su mandato de promover el diálogo entre los interlocutores sociales, Eurofound ha realizado un seguimiento y un análisis de la evolución de los sistemas de relaciones laborales a escala de la UE y de los Estados miembros de la UE durante más de 40 años. El presente informe de referencia se basa en el trabajo realizado en este contexto durante el último período de programación (2015-2019). Se fundamenta en el amplio seguimiento de los sistemas de relaciones laborales y del diálogo social que lleva a cabo Eurofound de forma permanente.