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17-07-2018

EFSI statement

On the Commission proposal for a directive on transparent and predictable working conditions

EFSI welcomes the European Commission’s willingness to improve domestic workers’ rights. The provisions foreseen in the Directive proposal aims at decreasing the gap between workers employed by a private household and those employed by a provider, which will benefit the PHS sector as a whole. However, EFSI believes that their impact will be limited and therefore underlines that:

-       the proposal for a Directive on transparent and predictable working conditions should be in line with the ILO Convention No 189 and should not prevent the European Commission to encourage Member States to ratify it,

-      the European Commission should encourage social dialogue within the PHS sector, as social partners are the most suited to elaborate solutions that would improve domestic workers’ rights,

-     the European Union should develop a comprehensive approach towards the PHS sector in order to tackle the interlinked challenges (prevalence of undeclared work, job and service’s quality, professionalization, increasing demand, lack of investment, etc.) which impact greatly on domestic workers’ rights and job quality. In this regard, successful practices implemented in various EU countries [1] should be promoted through various EU tools such as the European semester process, the EMCO committee, the European Platform tackling Undeclared Work or the European Social Fund, to name but a few.

Please find at the following link the statement including specific comments on Articles 1, 4 and 5.

 

[1] In this regard we can mention the Service voucher system (Titres-services/Dienstencheques) implemented in Belgium, the tax incentives and the Universal Service Employment voucher (CESU) implemented in France, as well as the tax-deduction for domestic service work (RUT-avdrag) implemented in Sweden.

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