What new model for production and work facing the explosion of unemployment

REPORT THEMATIC FORUM

Current situation:

• COVID19 crisis has brought/enhanced: free economic competition based in labour costs // States getting less and less taxes // more unbalanced labour relation
• Left progressive thinking has to shape this revolution or we will become unimportant
• Big chunks of the European population has almost been “left behind”
• If we do not provide the answers, answers will not be democratic
• Nobody knows what the “new normal” will look like

We need to:

• Forge a new “civilisation project”, with job creation and re-skilling of workforce
• EU Central Bank controlled by member states
• Stop relocation and outsourcing consequences
• Focus EU policies on social protection, minimum salary, extensive public services
• Feminist and Youth approach
• Govern the environmental and technological transition and the transit to a new social and economic model towards a circular economy
• Aim to a “left no one behind” policy
• Money of the EU “recovery Plan” in the pocket of workers, not multinationals
• Give the “Just Transition” concept a key role in any recovery plan
• Assess the benefits of a possible European membership of workers

Solutions:

• Industrial & economic sovereignty of states, not corporations lead
• EU cooperation rules: erase social dumping and harmonise taxes (end tax havens)
• Economic gains devoted to the benefit of people
• Reduction of working time without reduction of wages
• Universal income
• Rights for precarious workers and new forms of employment (a new Chart of Rights)
• Redistribute workload in Europe
• Priority given to national and sectoral level CBA’s over company agreements
• Fossil fuels industry model re-shaped towards a green model
• Re-skilling of workers through a European “Marshall Plan”
• Automation seen as an opportunity at macro-level (possibly a threat at micro-level)
• Ensure statutory minimum wages to erase working-poor situations

Conclusions:

• Citizens expecting solutions from a left social-political alliance at European level.
• Collective bargaining and labour rights need to be regained with a progressive agenda
• We have to deliver a way to a fair and social environmental transition
• Unite forces, show UNITY and SOLIDARITY is paramount to gain strength and visibility
• Future of work and society has to be human-centric and based on ethics

TODAY’S UTOPIA IS TOMORROW’S REALITY

Enrique Carmona