001. May 2021
CSIT UNIÓN PROFESIONAL (Spain) calls for improved employment conditions in the care and health sector for posted workers
The demand for care for the elderly, of which home care is an important part, will inevitably increase in the coming decades, from four people of working age today to two in 2050.
In several countries, home care services are provided through cooperation with posted workers in transnational alliances that guarantee high-quality services and fair working conditions for workers, citizens, companies and consumers; but, in many cases, these professional services are provided by workers without employment contracts, without specific regulation and without adequate and dignified employment conditions, which make these professional services an important focus of the black economy.
Thus, both the situations of abuse towards workers in many of these contracts, as well as the ineffectiveness of the current European Union regulations due to their deficient application in some states and the lack of regulations in some specific areas, make it necessary for the European Commission to investigate what is going wrong in terms of the rights of these workers in the health and care sector and to establish improvements in their working conditions. In this sense, CSIT UNIÓN PROFESIONAL demands improvements in the application of the Directives and a specific regulation for care and health care workers for the elderly and dependent persons in the EU as a whole, whose main demands are as follows:
- Reviewing the current definition of posted workers in health and care by extending the conditions of employment to the rest of the workers in this professional sector.
- Strengthen the actions of the Labour Inspectorates by increasing cooperation and coordination in all EU Member States to prevent abuse of health and care workers.
- Guarantee access to information on their conditions of employment in their language of origin, translating into the different languages of the Union the basic documentation on labour rights and making it available to posted workers.
- Establish mandatory minimum measures for all Member States regarding the remuneration of posted workers on an equal footing with nationals of the sector, and not leave it to individual States to regulate this in their national legislation.
- To apply effective and strong sanctions for companies in cases of serious violations of posted workers’ rights, and for these sanctions to be enforceable in any EU Member State.
With this argument, the Secretary-General of CSIT UNIÓN PROFESIONAL has indicated that “it is necessary to advance in the working conditions of professionals in the Health and Care Sector, guaranteeing greater participation of the same in their employment conditions and in matters as specific as health and safety, and training”; in addition to “establishing a specific regulation for all workers in the Health and Care Sector for the elderly and dependent persons in the framework of the European Union”.
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