As Europe prepares for the European Commission’s 3 December publication of the Quality Jobs Package and Quality Jobs Act, EFFAT’s Executive Committee (ExCo) placed the spotlight firmly on one of the most urgent challenges in today’s labour market: fair working conditions across subcontracting chains and labour intermediaries.
Today EFFAT organised a high-level policy focus on these issues, featuring Rolf Schmachtenberg (Germany’s former State Secretary and Expert to the European Commission), Johan Danielsson (Vice-Chair of the European Parliament’s EMPL Committee and rapporteur of the own-initiative report on subcontracting), and Francesco Corti (Cabinet member of Executive Vice-President Roxana Minzatu).
Keeping Fair Treatment on the EU Agenda
Across Europe, the unchecked rise of contracting and subcontracting as a business model – increasingly applied even to core activities – is driving a steady decline in job quality and security. Workers hired through contractors and subcontractors often earn lower wages, face weaker protections, and are excluded from collective agreements, even when performing the same work as directly employed colleagues.
Recruitment is too often conducted through opaque labour intermediaries, creating loopholes that enable exploitation. In the hospitality sector, for instance, the Novotel Genova case exposed how essential tasks like room cleaning were outsourced, resulting in workers performing identical jobs under vastly different pay and conditions. Such practices blatantly violate the principle of equal treatment for the same work in the same workplace — and they are spreading fast.
The opacity and intertwining of subcontracting chains and intermediaries make it nearly impossible to determine who is truly responsible for workers’ rights. Fragmented national rules have failed to stop these abuses. A coordinated EU response is urgently needed.
EFFAT’s Demand: An EU Directive, that ensures equal treatment and tackles abuse.
EFFAT has presented its very own Model Directive on Subcontracting and Labour Intermediation in May Last year.
The proposal would:
- Limit subcontracting and ensuring that equal pay for equal work applies in every workplace and throughout the subcontracting chain.
- Address gangmaster practices and regulating labour intermediaries through the creation of a community license and national registers.
- Increase the frequency and bolstering the effectiveness of labour inspections, setting a minimum threshold for inspections, and requiring Member States to use cross-checking of data between enforcement authorities to identify potential labour abuses.
EFFAT calls on the European Commission to include this binding initiative in the Quality Jobs Roadmap and Quality Jobs Act, due by the end of 2025, and to launch legislative action without delay.
To support this effort, mobilisation of EFFAT affiliates is being organised in December and January to ensure that workers’ voices are heard loud and clear:
Europe needs fair and truly quality jobs, not unscrupulous intermediaries and endless chains of exploitation.
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