Reducing reporting requirements means slashing workers’ protection, trade union chief warns

Cutting the EU regulatory burden could imply undercutting workers’ protections, Esther Lynch, head of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), warned in an interview with Euractiv.

Different parts of the business community and national governments, including France, Germany, and Italy, have recently increased calls for a leaner regulatory framework.

The Antwerp declaration – signed in February by over 1000 industry and trade union representatives – and an EU leaders’ special summit last week have pitched scaling back reporting requirements as a crucial way to bolster the bloc’s competitiveness – and thus a key demand for the upcoming legislative mandate.

However, Lynch, whose organisation represents 45 million workers across Europe, said that this discussion was “a distraction and not a solution.”

She said, “Businesses, especially energy-intensive businesses, are experiencing difficulties and challenges, but they are not solved by a deregulation agenda.”

“Quite a lot of reporting regulations correspond to […] health and safety rights,” Lynch said, warning that reducing them would, in fact, lower workers’ protection.

Lynch cited mandatory safety checks for high-risk machinery – scrapped in 2006 as part of the EU Commission’s ‘Better Regulation’ agenda but re-introduced in 2022 after an increase in workplace injuries.

However, last year Commission President Ursula von der Leyen pledged to reduce businesses’ reporting obligations by 25% – a target which is expected to be implemented after the June elections.

The ETUC criticised the move as “arbitrary”, warning it would jeopardise the “vision of a social Europe” fostered by Jacques Delors, the former Commission president who oversaw the creation of the single market in 1993.

Fearing what businesses see as an “unnecessary burden” could mean getting rid of contractual safeguards for workers and employees, Lynch said: “What we keep asking for is for that threat to be taken off the table.” 

‘Distraction, not a solution’

Her comments respond to statements by Markus Beyrer, director general of BusinessEurope, who claimed to Euractiv that unions were “increasingly coming on board,” with the business association emphasising the need to counter Europe’s industrial downturn.

While Beyrer said there would need to be “very credible steps to reduce the regulatory burden,” Lynch said that companies raised different priorities when she spoke with them.

“All the discussions we have with companies are not about deregulation,” she said. “[They] are about energy costs, […] about the problem of an unfair trade situation, and […] about delivering the just transition,” she said.

“That’s where we see the problems and the solutions lying, not in whether or not somebody is entitled to a statement of their terms and conditions when they start a job.”

Her remarks echo concerns from other trade unions, including Germany’s United Service Union (Ver.di), whose chief economist Dierk Hierschel said in March that many businesses would have a “hidden agenda” when calling for reducing ‘bureaucracy’.

“For example, when they call for the documentation of the minimum wage to be cut, […] for more flexible working hours – i.e. no longer documenting working hours – [or] for reductions in occupational health and safety,” said Hierschel.

However, not everyone seems to share Lynch’s and Hierschel’s view.

Michael Vassiliadis, head of Germany’s chemical trade union IG BCE, said at an event in Berlin last Tuesday (16 April): “I am on board with many […] things on deregulation and with the question: What exactly does [a regulation] actually achieve? […] For which goal […]?” 

Vassiliadis urged policymakers to “tidy up” regulation, saying that many required documents would bring “exactly zero” benefit.

Vassiliadis is also at the helm of IndustriALL – an umbrella association for mining, energy, and manufacturing workers, and a member of the ETUC.

When asked about the statements, Lynch said “There’s no disagreement between us and any of our affiliates.”

The spectre of manufacturing job losses

As president of IndustriAll, Vassiliadis is among the signatories of the Antwerp Declaration, which includes a call for overarching legislation “to take corrective measures on all relevant existing EU regulations”.

While NGO Corporate Europe Observatory warned that this could weaken vital social and environmental legislations, Lynch, who participated in the Antwerp discussions, was reassured to see other key issues high up on the Antwerp agenda, including shared concerns about the problematic state of the manufacturing sector.

“What they were talking about was, importantly, the price of energy for energy-intensive industries, and they sounded the alarm bell on unfair trade,” said Lynch.

“I am happy to support the call for an industrial policy, because, from our point of view, these are quality jobs which are on the line,” she added.

In March, the ETUC warned that, between the third quarter of 2019 and the end of 2023, as many as 853,000 jobs had been lost across the EU manufacturing sector.

The bloc’s industrial powerhouse, Germany, is particularly hard-hit by the manufacturing crisis – a trend that threatens to continue given the persistently higher energy prices in Germany compared to other locations.

This has resulted in the country’s economy lagging behind its global peers, with the government slashing its growth expectations for this year to 0.2%, from a previous 1.3% forecast.

[Edited by Anna Brunetti/Rajnish Singh]

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