Il-Fondazzjoni Ewropea għat-Titjib tal-Kundizzjonijiet ta’ l-Għajxien u tax-Xogħol
L-aġenzija tripartitika tal-UE li tipprovdi għarfien biex tgħin fl-iżvilupp taʼ titjib ta' politiki soċjali, dwar l-impjiegi u dawk relatati max-xogħol.
Stress at work is still the biggest health and safety concern according to research by the Trades Union Congress (TUC).
The TUC published its biennial survey of union health and safety representatives in November 2014.The survey is designed to help the TUC and its affiliated unions with ongoing safety campaigning and organisation.
Some of the key findings of the survey are as follows.
The National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) has joined the Trades Union Congress (TUC). It joined in November 2014, bringing the number of unions affiliated to the TUC to 54.
It is the largest union to affiliate to the TUC for some time, with 28,500 members across England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Its members include head teachers, deputies, assistant head teachers, bursars and school business managers. Five other school teaching unions are already TUC affiliates.
An analysis has been made in Lithuania of the problems of stress experienced by employees in workplaces undergoing reorganisation.
The Institute of Hygiene published the findings of the study, ‘Health-Damaging Behaviour for Nurses in the Changing Psychosocial Environment of Hospitals under Restructuring’, in November 2014.
It provides recommendations on how to:
reduce the negative impact of restructuring on the staff;
A review of the different organisations set up by the main national social dialogue institution, the Tripartite Council of the Republic of Lithuania (LRTT), has been made.
In order to improve performance, in November 2014, two committees were closed:
Spain’s new High Council of Chambers of Commerce has been officially launched, with a remit to ‘manage internationalisation and competiveness plans of companies abroad’.
The chamber has a number of powerful members from Spain’s largest companies, which strongly supported the project. However, the significant presence of large companies was not welcomed by the main organisations representing the self-employed and small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Meanwhile, Spain’s larger companies argued that they had strong experience of internationalisation processes.
The closure of Hungary’s National Labour Office (NMH) on 1 January 2015 has come under fire.
The government said NMH was no longer succeeding in its major task of acting as a bridge between employers and job seekers.
A variety of government offices have taken on previous NMH tasks such as job placement, employment support, occupational health, safety at work, vocational training, public work programmes, and provision of employment and social benefits.
Experts have criticised the changes and have questioned the reasons behind the move.
A summit gathering of trade union leaders across the Baltic Sea region was held in Tallinn on 19 November 2014. The event was organised by the Estonia’s Baltic Sea Trade Union Network (BASTUN).
The meeting focused on two issues. First, it discussed the trade unions’ role in improvements in economic growth. Secondly, it looked at how to make current union members more active and how to increase union membership in the future.
A six-year project to change attitudes to undeclared work in Bulgaria has released its findings.
The project was carried out by the Association of Industrial Capital in Bulgaria (AICB) working in partnership with the Confederation of Independent Trade Unions in Bulgaria (CITUB). The long-term aim was to reduce and prevent the informal economy in Bulgaria.
A proposal to increase the retirement age in Norway from 70 to 72 years-old has had a mixed reaction.
Changes to legislation relating to the age at which a person’s employment can be automatically terminated by an employer were proposed in November 2014.
The changes are not related to the pension system or pension rights. However, they will make it possible for workers to stay longer in employment for employers that are happy for them to work beyond the normal retirement age.
The European Restructuring Monitor (ERM) has reported on the employment impact of large-scale business restructuring since 2002. This publication series include the ERM reports, as well as blogs, articles and working papers on restructuring-related events in the EU27 and Norway.
Eurofound’s European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS) paints a wide-ranging picture of Europe at work across countries, occupations, sectors and age groups. This series consists of findings from the European Working Conditions Telephone Survey (EWCTS) 2021, an extraordinary edition conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic. The survey was first carried out in 1990.
This publication series gathers all overview reports on developments in working life, annual reviews in industrial relations and working conditions produced by Eurofound on the basis of national contributions from the Network of Eurofound Correspondents (NEC). Since 1997, these reports have provided overviews of the latest developments in industrial relations and working conditions across the EU and Norway. The series may include recent ad hoc articles written by members of the NEC.
Eurofound’s work on COVID-19 examines the far-reaching socioeconomic implications of the pandemic across Europe as they continue to impact living and working conditions. A key element of the research is the e-survey, launched in April 2020, with five rounds completed at different stages during 2020, 2021 and 2022. This is complemented by the inclusion of research into the ongoing effects of the pandemic in much of Eurofound’s other areas of work.
Eurofound's representativeness studies are designed to allow the European Commission to identify the ‘management and labour’ whom it must consult under article 154 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU). This series consists of studies of the representativeness of employer and worker organisations in various sectors.
This series reports on developments in minimum wage rates across the EU, including how they are set and how they have developed over time in nominal and real terms. The series explores where there are statutory minimum wages or collectively agreed minimum wages in the Member States, as well as minimum wage coverage rates by gender.
The European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS) launched in 1990 and is carried out every five years, with the latest edition in 2015. It provides an overview of trends in working conditions and quality of employment for the last 30 years. It covers issues such as employment status, working time duration and organisation, work organisation, learning and training, physical and psychosocial risk factors, health and safety, work–life balance, worker participation, earnings and financial security, work and health, and most recently also the future of work.
Eurofound’s Flagship report series 'Challenges and prospects in the EU' comprise research reports that contain the key results of multiannual research activities and incorporate findings from different related research projects. Flagship reports are the major output of each of Eurofound’s strategic areas of intervention and have as their objective to contribute to current policy debates.
Eurofound’s European Company Survey (ECS) maps and analyses company policies and practices which can have an impact on smart, sustainable and inclusive growth, as well as the development of social dialogue in companies. This series consists of outputs from the ECS 2019, the fourth edition of the survey. The survey was first carried out in 2004–2005 as the European Survey on Working Time and Work-Life Balance.
This series reports on and updates latest information on the involvement of national social partners in policymaking. The series analyses the involvement of national social partners in the implementation of policy reforms within the framework of social dialogue practices, including their involvement in elaborating the National Reform Programmes (NRPs).
In 2022, the European Semester was streamlined to integrate the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) established on 19 February 2021 (Regulation (EU) 2021/241). While facing the geopolitical and economic challenges triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Member States have been implementing the national Recovery and Resilience Plans (RRPs) for more than one year and around 100 billion euro in RRF funds have already been disbursed.
This report explores the association between skills use and skills strategies and establishment performance, and how other workplace practices, in terms of work organisation, human resources management and employee involvement, can impact on this. It looks at how skills shortages can be addressed, at least in part, by creating an environment in which employees are facilitated and motivated to make better use of the skills they already have. This further supports the business case for a more holistic approach to management.
With the expansion of telework and different forms of hybrid work as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is important for policymakers to consider both the opportunities and the negative consequences that may result. This report will explore potential scenarios for such work. In doing so, it will identify trends and drivers, and predict how they might interact to create particular outcomes and how they are likely to affect workers and businesses. Policy pointers will outline what could be done to facilitate desirable outcomes and to avoid undesirable ones.
This paper provides an analytical summary of state of the art academic and policy literature on the impact of climate change and policies to manage transitions to a carbon neutral economy on employment, working conditions, social dialogue and living conditions. It maps the key empirical findings around the impact of climate change and the green transitions on jobs, sectors, regions and countries in Europe, identifying the opportunities and risks that climate change policies bring to European labour markets.
This report explores the drivers of economic and social convergence in Europe, using a selected set of economic and social indicators to examine trends in the performance of individual Member States. It also investigates what role the Economic and Monetary Union plays in convergence, particularly in southern and eastern Member States. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on convergence is analysed and initial conclusions are drawn about the impact of EU recovery packages and their ability to prevent divergence.
As economies emerge from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, labour shortages are becoming increasingly evident. These include shortages exacerbated by the crisis in some sectors and professions where they had been endemic for some time. This report will look at measures implemented at national level to tackle labour shortages in the health, care and information and communications technology sectors, as well as those arising from the twin digital and green transitions.
Adequate, affordable housing has become a matter of great concern, with an alarming number of Europeans with low or lower household incomes unable to access any, especially in capital cities. Housing was a key factor in people’s experience of the COVID-19 pandemic: its quality and level of safety significantly affected how lockdowns and social distancing measures were experienced, with those who had no access to quality housing at higher risk of deteriorating living conditions and well-being.
The COVID-19 pandemic triggered an extraordinary level of provision of social services across the EU. Healthcare and care providers carried much of the burden and, together with essential services, played a crucial role in getting citizens through the crisis. This report explores how public services adapted to the new reality and what role was played by the digital transformation of services. The aim is to contribute to the documentation and analysis of changes in funding, delivery and use of healthcare and social services during the pandemic.
The urban-rural divide in EU countries has grown in recent years, and the depopulation of certain rural areas in favour of cities is a challenge when it comes to promoting economic development and maintaining social cohesion and convergence. Using data from Eurofound and Eurostat, this report will investigate the trends and drivers of the urban-rural divide, in various dimensions: economic and employment opportunities, access to services, living conditions and quality of life.
Building on previous work by Eurofound, this report will investigate intergenerational dynamics over time. During the 2008 double-dip recession, worrying intergenerational divides appeared in many Member States, and while some of the economic and social impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is universal, early data suggests disparities across demographic cohorts. Eurofound will examine how different age groups may have been affected in terms of their health, labour market participation, quality of life and financial needs, both in the short term and in the long term.
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