The bottom line is that a decent life is made possible through decent work. Workers are enabled through secure jobs to be able to plan for their future and plan for their family.

While Europe has been experiencing a recovery in recent years, growth and jobs are not enough. Quality jobs are needed. Most of the jobs created are of poor quality, badly paid, lacking job security and with little or no social protection. Precarious work has many faces; involuntary part-time work, mini-jobs, bogus self-employment, zero-hour contracts, fixed-term contracts, agency work, the list goes on…

A recent study by the Hans-Boeckler-Foundation in Germany showed that already between 1993 and 2012 almost 13 per cent of Germans found themselves in precarious situations as a result of low pay, unstable working conditions or a lack of future job certainty. It is evident that the situation has not improved with time and is not properly reflected in official statistics.

It is crucial that workers can rely on a steady and predictable number of working hours, that they can trust that the future of their jobs is secure and that they are guaranteed social protection for worst-case-scenarios.

Precarious jobs prevent workers from having the necessary financial guarantees to get a mortgage. At the end of the day, precarious work leads to precarious lives. Working people deserve decent and secure work that enables them to live good lives and give their families a decent standard of living.

On the World Day for Decent Work, industriAll Europe calls for an end to precarious jobs. Luc Triangle, General Secretary of industriAll Europe said “The bottom line is that a decent life is made possible through decent work. Workers are enabled through secure jobs to be able to plan for their future and plan for their family. We call on the European institutions and national governments to put a stop to precarious work.”

On the World Day for Decent Work, industriAll Europe is calling on the European Parliament to strengthen the draft Directive on Transparent and Predictable Working Conditions to pave the way to tackle abusive flexible work contracts and provide clear rights to all ‘non-standard’ workers, such as platform and gig-economy workers.