Catering workers today rallies along hundreds of other workers in cleaning security and logistics, demanding an overhaul of the EU’s public procurement rules that have negatively shaped their pay, their hours, and the quality of the food served in Europe’s schools, hospitals, and care homes for years.
These are sectors where public contracts are still too often awarded to whoever bids the lowest price.
Lowest price means workers bear the cost.
600,000 contract catering workers in Europe serve 6 billion meals a year. But when public tenders are decided almost entirely on cost, workers absorb costs through short-staffed kitchens, stalled wages, or contracts that get subcontracted to increase the bidders’ margin.
This has become the basis of a demand that speaks to workers and employers alike. EFFAT has laid it out in a Joint Position on the Revision of the EU Public Procurement Directives, presented to the European Parliament, calling for procurement to reward “best value” quality, working conditions, and sustainability.
It’s a political fight for workers and the public good.
At today’s demo EFFAT’s Tourism Political Secretary Virginie Demoucron said:
“Social conditions must be built into the rules – not as guidance, but as binding obligations. The ‘lowest price’ principle must go. It’s time we stop rewarding companies that race to the bottom on wages and start rewarding those respecting collective agreements and fair pay. These companies deserve to win public contracts’
Workers’ asks.
Workers in contract catering, along with those in cleaning and security, demand:
- Scrap “lowest price” as a stand-alone award criterion for public catering contracts, replacing it with quality- and value-based criteria.
- Require respect for collective bargaining agreements as a condition of winning a public tender, so undercutting wages can’t be a competitive strategy.
- Limit subcontracting chains, so that responsibility for pay and conditions can’t be diluted across layers of intermediaries.
- Ensure that public procurement prioritises food produced in a socially and environmentally sustainable way, benefitting all workers across the agri-food chain, from farm to table.
