The European Commission is studying proposing a legislative initiative to regulate teleworking and the right to disconnect in the European Union, after negotiations between European employers and unions aimed at establishing new rules ended this Monday without agreement.
The European Commissioner for Employment, Nicolas Schmit, assured at a press conference that the negotiations between social agents on the right to disconnection and teleworking “have not been successful”, something that he “deeply regrets”, he stated. However, Schmit also commented that, in his opinion, they were close to reaching an agreement.
Schmit recalled that instead of the Community Executive presenting a legislative proposal to regulate teleworking, it had been decided to try to get the social agents to negotiate their own agreement and translate what was agreed into a community directive, but after the failure of social dialogue “the The initiative belongs again to the Commission.”
“We are verifying what was discussed and negotiated between the social agents, because we have a text, and on the basis of that analysis we are going to make a decision,” said Schmit, who recalled that the European Commission had committed to the European Parliament to act on this area.
A year of conversations
The European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) and the public service employers’ association SGI Europe, which had represented employers together with BusinessEurope and SMEUnited, announced this Monday that after a year of talks they had not managed to close a agreement to regulate teleworking.
The unions criticized that the employers blocked the agreement when two of them refused to propose a compromise text and withdrew from the negotiating table; and called on the European Commission to “initiate rapid legislative action” to ensure “adequate” working conditions for those who telework.
The directive, they said in a statement, should guarantee the right to disconnect, ensure equal pay and treatment for teleworkers, protect privacy and avoid invasive surveillance, ensure that the decision to telework is up to the worker and not respond to the replacement of workplaces; as well as promoting the participation of unions in the design of teleworking.
SGI Europe also regretted the failure of the negotiation, assured that they were willing to vote on the proposal and asked the Commission to “take inspiration” from the commitments achieved by the social agents to take the “next steps.”
The Covid-19 pandemic boosted the use of teleworking so that if in 2019 only 5.5% of EU workers worked from home, in 2021 that proportion had more than doubled, up to 13.5%.
According to data from the unions, these people are six times more likely to work during their free time and twice more likely to work for 48 hours than the rest of the employed, which makes the regulation of this type of work and the right to disconnect.
