Publications

This article discusses the issues related to religion in the workplace, a topic that has received considerable attention in the media recently. An overview of significant cases of dispute between employers and employees is provided, as well as examples of social partners’ initiatives to accommodate the needs of religious people in the workplace.

Changes to state employment, a new youth traineeship framework and an agreement to halt the off-shoring of call centres are the main topics of interest in this article. This country update reports on the latest developments in working life in Italy in the second quarter of 2017.

The end of major disputes in the health and social care sectors, a new collective agreement in the finance sector and an awareness campaign about fatal work accidents are the main topics of interest in this article. This country update reports on the latest developments in working life in Luxembourg in the second quarter of 2017.

Political action around the financial assistance programme, new legislation on collective bargaining, the decision to open shops on Sunday and a pilot programme on combating undeclared work are the main topics of interest in this article. This country update reports on the latest developments in working life in Greece in the second quarter of 2017.

Across European countries, the ‘employment contract’ has been, and still is, the point of reference for determining the rights and obligations of both workers and employers. When direct subordinated employment is disguised as self-employment, it is termed ‘bogus’. Work can be contracted in several different ways. The main distinction remains the one between ‘employment’ and ‘self-employment’: this is a prominent feature in all European legal systems, built around the concepts of ‘subordination’ and ‘autonomy’.

Employment relations remain defined vis-à-vis the standard employment relationship (permanent, full-time, direct). Fixed-term contracts are therefore understood as non-standard employment contracts by which an employer hires an employee for a fixed duration. The main difference between permanent and fixed-term contracts is the certainty, in the latter employment situation, of the expiry date.

Regulated at European level, the posting of workers is a practice used between companies located in different countries A worker is posted when their original employer sends them to work, for a temporary period, in another company. Posting has been defined as a specific form of labour mobility within the EU.

Among the fraudulent contracting of work practices, one of the most difficult to identify is the creation of sham companies (usually, in another country). Sham companies are essentially new entities created to disguise the real employer. Creating a company, even abroad, is – of course – legal and may well be institutionally and economically advisable.

A traineeship is generally defined as an education and training programme combined with work experience, devised for certain groups – usually unemployed young people. Various types of traineeship are found across EU Member States. Traineeships have recently been actively promoted by the European Commission as a political response to persistent high youth unemployment rates – for instance, within the Youth Guarantee initiatives developed in most Member States.

The EU has finally recovered all the net employment losses sustained since the global financial crisis. It has been a long and painful process. But there is at last growing evidence of positive momentum in EU labour markets, if not quite ‘animal spirits’. Many of those member states most affected by the global downturn have recorded significant employment growth in the last three years – including Spain (+9%), Ireland (+8%) and Greece (+5%).