The EU’s gender pay gap won’t be eliminated until the next century at the current pace of change, ETUC research shows amid a delay in promised European Commission action to end the scandal.
Eurostat data shows the EU gender pay gap has closed by 1% over the last eight years, which means women will be waiting for another 84 years to achieve equal pay if current trends continue.
Without binding pay equality measures to change the current trends, the ETUC also found:
Responding to the conclusion of the European Council, ETUC General Secretary Luca Visentini said:
“The dependence on imports which caused shortages of PPE and medical supplies during the Covid crisis showed just how important it is that Europe develops more strategic autonomy.
“But EU leaders can’t achieve that aim without strong domestic industries, which were already struggling against unfair global competition and have now been pushed towards major cuts and redundancies by Covid.
The European Trade Union Confederation is calling on national governments to maintain emergency job protection measures as EU unemployment rose for the sixth month in a row.
According to Eurostat official figures published today, 238,000 more people became permanently unemployed between July and August.
That means the number of permanent job losses since lockdown began in March is over 1.7 million, taking total EU unemployment to 15.6 million.
The overall unemployment rate has increased from 6.4% to 7.4% since March, and from 14.5% to 17.6% among young people.
Commenting on the European Commission’s Rule of Law report ETUC General Secretary Luca Visentini said
“The European Union is supposed to be a union of democratic countries where the rule of law is supreme – yet the rule of law is being undermined in a number of countries, and firm action is needed to re-establish it.
Responding to the launch of the European Commission’s new Pact for Migration and Asylum, ETUC Confederal Secretary Ludovic Voet said:
“Trade unions know the meaning of solidarity and this is not it. Fortress Europe looks stronger than ever.
Trade unions welcome action by the European Commission today to protect over 1.1 million people from work-related cancer by putting binding exposure limits on three dangerous substances.
The Commission has proposed Binding Occupational Exposure Limit Values (BOELs) on Acrylonitrile, Nickel compounds and Benzene as part of an update to its Carcinogens and Mutagens Directive (CMD).
The European Commission’s Annual Sustainable Growth Strategy, published on Thursday, provides few clues as to how it intends to deliver greater social fairness that it commits to in its €750bn Recovery and Resilience Plan, warns the ETUC.
The Survey is supposed to show the next steps for the EU’s recovery, but does not reveal the next steps for social fairness and just transition.
The European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) supports the European Commission’s proposal for a new -55% GHG emission reduction target, but the plan to achieve it published today overlooks the just transition needed to make the change fair for workers.
Commenting on the 2030 Climate Target Plan, ETUC Confederal Secretary Ludovic Voet said:
Responding to the State of the Union speech, ETUC General Secretary Luca Visentini said:
“Ursula von der Leyen perfectly described Europe’s low pay problem today without clearly committing to the solutions: ending minimum wages below the poverty threshold and the right to collective bargaining for all.
Ursula von der Leyen has taken an important step towards securing trade union support for her plans on minimum wages today with a pledge in the Swedish media to protect and promote collective bargaining.
The European Commission president said that the EU will “never” impose a statutory minimum wage on the six member states which set wages exclusively through collective bargaining – Austria, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, Italy and Sweden.
