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No safety net

More and more people are working half-days, going freelance or working on limited contracts. How are Europe's trade unions reacting to these new forms of work?

Part-time work, minimal employment, freelancing and temporary agency work - these are just some of the many forms that work takes in Europe nowadays. In particular young people, women, migrants and the less-qualified tend to be "atypically employed", and therefore have little social security, but in the areas of culture and media, health and education an increasing number of university graduates are joining the ranks of those who fall into this category.

Photo: Frankenmarco (Photocase)

Yet this type of employment is atypical only to the extent that one considers permanent, continuous full-time employment - which is actually on the decline in Europe - to be "normal".

More limited contracts

According to the European Trade Union Confederation, the number of employees working on limited contracts rose by ten million between 1997 and the present to reach its current level of 32 million (14,5 percent). In the same period the number of part-time workers went up from 32 to 40 million (18 percent). But particularly dramatic was the rise in the number of temporary agency employees. In Germany, for example, according to the Federal Employment Agency in the past decade it has grown from an average of 200,000 (1997) to 731,000 (2007) - thus accounting for 2.5 percent of the German workforce today. In the Netherlands that figure stands at 4.5 percent.

Hard times for Germany's Trade Unions

All Europe's trade unions are having a hard time coming to terms with these developments. Germany's unions put up a particularly tough struggle. As an increasing range of work forms became established on the labour market, they campaigned for a return to "normal employment" - or in other words permanent, full-time employment with liability for social insurance. In the meantime they have started advocating the rights of temporary agency workers and set up an advisory website for the self-employed, "mediafon.net" http://www.mediafon.net/. But trade union policy continues to focus primarily on its main clients, workers and employees. Still, at least Annelie Bunenbach of the Confederation of German Trade Unions is now demanding that the "customers of people who are self-employed contribute to their social insurance".

The Netherlands' Flex Law

Dutch trade unions are one step ahead when it comes to fighting for the rights of atypical workers. The Dutch labour market was deregulated before Germany's. The trade unions were at the negotiating table right from the start and engineered the current flexibility. The Flex Law which governs temporary agency work, for example, comprises a phase model: the longer a temporary worker works with a temping agency the more rights he acquires. And after working for the same firm for a certain amount of time he must receive the same pay as permanent staff. The rapidly growing group of self-employed workers has also become a client of the Dutch trade union federation Federatie Nederlandse Vakbeweging (FNV). The latter is now demanding a minimum wage for this category of workers. The FNV claims it now has around 30,000 self-employed members.

Austria's old pay system

In Austria, on the other hand, the old pay system is still intact. Here the "Equal Pay System" applies: temporary workers receive the same pay as permanent staff. But in Austria too, the number of freelancers and self-employed is rising. They have already been incorporated into the social insurance system - making them social partners. The Austrian Federation of Trade Unions (ÖGB) is now demanding that they be incorporated into the country's employment law because then the collective agreements would also apply to them - and along with them the minimum wage.

The lack of a coordinated approach

In Sweden and Denmark, atypical workers generally have fewer problems with social insurance. In these countries social insurance is financed through taxes. All workers, whether employees or self-employed, have social insurance. Clearly, Europe's trade unions have different approaches to these new forms of employment. The ÖGB wants to incorporate atypical workers into the existing system of regulations. The FNV is moving with the changes and trying to make them socially compatible. The German trade unions have long struggled to repress them - and are consequently lagging behind the trend. There is no coordinated approach.

Annegret Nill

Annegret Nill lives in Berlin. She works as a freelance journalist, translator and n-ost correspondent.
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