etui.podcast

A discussion about the latest scholarly thinking on the 'just transition' agenda and the ongoing challenges of effective policy implementation.   How does just transition interrelate with ideas about ‘eco-social’ transformation? What is the best way to define, and enact, the ‘justice’ part of the concept?  And how do we get the policy design right, particularly in an often unsympathetic political environment? The guests on this episode of 'Voices on the world of work' are Paolo Graziano, Professor of Political Science at the University of Padua and Research Associate at the European Social Observatory, and Giorgos Galanis, Reader in Applied Economics at Queen Mary University of London and Visiting Senior Fellow at The London School of Economics. Further reading EU funds for the socio-ecological transition | etui (Paolo Graziano, Sebastiano Sabato, Slavina Spasova, Filippo Grisolia and Federica Fleischmann) Towards a just transition | etui (Giorgos Galanis and Lilit Popoyan) Who supports a (just) green transition? | etui Workers as climate actors: what can unions do about climate change? | etui ETUI topic page: Just transition, industrial policy and climate change | etui 

A crisis has been building in Europe's automotive industry over the past few years, as it has struggled to adapt to the challenges of Chinese competition and the shift to electromobility.  For a sector that employs millions of workers, this is a serious issue - for people's jobs, for Europe's industrial core, and for the green transition as a whole.  So let's unpack this complicated relationship between the woes of the car industry and the push for electrification in Europe. How much is the former due to the latter, and why has electrification not happened faster? More fundamentally, what role should EU policy be playing in this delicate balancing act between climate, social and industrial objectives?  With me today to do this unpacking are Benjamin Denis, Head of Industrial Policy Coordination at IndustriAll Europe, which is the trade union federation of industrial workers, and Tommaso Pardi, Senior Researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, Director of GERPISA, the research network on the automotive industry, and contributor to the ETUI's recently published book 'Is ‘electromobility made in Europe’ still possible?' Further reading  ⁠Is ‘electromobility made in Europe’ still possible? | etui⁠ ⁠Is Europe on track towards net zero mobility? | etui⁠  ⁠On the way to electromobility - a green(er) but more unequal future? | etui⁠  ⁠Heavier, faster and less affordable cars | etui⁠  ⁠Enough is Enough⁠ (IndustriAll Europe campaign on the future of industry and industrial jobs in Europe) 

Europe is the fastest-warming continent on Earth, a reality that all kinds of workplaces need to adapt to. Recent survey evidence tells us that around one in five workers in the EU have reported exposure to extreme heat at work, rising to one in three workers in some southern countries. So this begs the question: does the law do enough to ensure adequate worker protection? And what are the costs of inaction? This episode's guest is Marouane Laabbas-el-Guennouni (ETUI), one of the authors of a new report on the impact of climate change on workers’ health, which looks at how EU legislation can be improved to address the challenge of rising temperatures. Joining us is Ivan Ivanov, political secretary at the European Federation of Food, Agriculture, and Tourism Trade Unions (EFFAT), which represents some of the most vulnerable types of labour when it comes to extreme heat exposure. Further readingClimate change and workers’ health | etuiWorkers and the climate challenge | etuiHeatwaves as an occupational hazard | etui[Mid-episode advert for Unsung: Cleaners, a new podcast from UNI Europa.]

EU Inc, otherwise known as the 28th regime, has made a big splash in Brussels recently. In March of this year, the European Commission proposed what it terms a ‘single set of corporate rules across the EU’ that companies – with a particular focus on startups – could opt into rather than having to navigate the myriad of national legal regimes on the continent. It is a flagship policy of the Commission's agenda for a more competitive European economy.  The Commission has claimed that the proposed Regulation includes strong safeguards against abuse, but the labour movement has strongly criticised some of the proposal's elements that present a risk to hard-won labour rights in individual Member States and the threat it poses to worker representation in corporate governance. In this discussion, Marcus Meyer-Erdmann and Sara Lafuente, senior researchers at the ETUI specialising in European industrial relations and worker participation, explain what's really at stake here.  To dive deeper into the ETUI's ongoing analysis of the 28th regime project, take a look at these two recent policy briefs:   Innovation or evasion? How the 28th Regime ‘EU Inc.’ undermines collective rights and shifts corporate risk on to workers | etui  How a 28th company law regime jeopardises workers’ rights | etui 

The Counter-app series explores how app-based workers can counter the power of their algorithmic bosses. Each episode is based on cutting-edge research by the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) on platform work and how workers are resisting digitised exploitation.In the final episode of this mini-series, journalist and researcher Ben Wray takes a deep-dive into the EU's recent Platform Work Directive, which Member States must transpose into their national legal regimes by December 2026.The episode is based on 'The Platform Work Directive: Trade union guide to transposition', the fourth and final report of the ETUC's Fair Platforms project, a series of manuals on work in the platform economy. Interested in hearing other 'voices on the world of work'? Take a look back at previous seasons of etui.podcast.AcknowledgementsThanks to Martin Willems, Daniel Cruz and Silvia Rainone for their contributions to this episode. Credits GeenStijl (2023). 'Uber Files: "Ruthless greed and state failure", testifies whistleblower Mark MacGann'. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLjBzIgqVvk Timestamps00:00 to 01:32: Introduction 1:33 to 04:52: Part 1 - The legal presumption of employment 04:53 to 08:46: Part 2 - Procedural laws 08:47 to 12:19: Part 3 - Intermediaries 12:20 to 14:47: Part 4 - Algorithmic management 14:48 to 20:24: Part 5 - Enforcement 20:25 to 20:54: Outro