The term ‘burnout’ has become a common one in recent times. But are we clear on what it really means and, even more importantly, exactly what causes it? The World Health Organization recently recognised it as an ‘occupational phenomenon’. So what should organisations be doing to prevent burnout or, at the very least, to address it when it does occur amongst their employees? 

Discussion with Evangelia Demerouti, Professor of Work and Organizational Psychology at the Eindhoven University of Technology and co-author (with Niels Adaloudis) of the recent ETUI report ‘Addressing burnout in organisations’. 

Further reading

Addressing burnout in organisations | etui 

The fractions and burden of cardiovascular diseases and depression attributable to psychosocial work exposures in the European Union | etui 

Psychosocial risks: a mounting crisis | etui  

Psychosocial risks in the healthcare and long-term care sectors | etui 

Recent years have arguably seen a ‘social turn’ in EU policymaking, with initiatives on minimum wages, pay transparency, platform work, corporate due diligence, and health and safety coming to fruition, amongst many others.

But in this moment of political change and uncertainty, can this 'social paradigm shift' be sustained?

Guests Bart Vanhercke, ETUI Research Director, and Sotiria Theodoropoulou, Head of Unit for 'European economic, employment and social policies', discuss the current state of play.

Further reading:

Benchmarking Working Europe 2024 | etui

Social policy in the European Union: state of play 2023 | etui

Industrial policy for quality jobs and a just transition | etui

Is the European Green Deal really leaving no-one behind? | etui

Dawn of a new era? | etui

In this episode, you will be hearing a conversation between Hamid Ekbia and Nicola Countouris on AI, the concept of Heteromation and how artificial intelligence is impacting and will impact our (working) lives. 

This episode is part of the Reconstruction Beyond the Pandemic Project.

What are psychosocial risks? PSRs are increasingly impacting all industries in every Member State. The effects of psychosocial risks can be long-lasting and have both physical and psychological impacts on workers’ lives (such as depression, musculoskeletal disorders or burnout).

Find out more: https://www.etui.org/publications/psychosocial-risks-europe

https://www.etui.org/sites/default/files/2021-12/01-ETU%20BM2021-Chap5-Occupational%20health%20and%20safety%20inequalities%20in%20the%20EU_1.pdf

This episode with David Natali (Professor of Comparative and EU politics at the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies) addresses some of the key questions stemming from the pandemic. The magnitude of the crisis, in terms of both its impact on health and well-being, and its consequences on economic prospects, is enormous. The massive spread of the virus, higher mortality rates, lockdowns and the huge decline in economic activity in 2020 all seemed to bode ill for our future.

Find out more in Transfer's latest issue on Covid-19. 

What type of European social citizenship does the public across the European Union (EU) prefer on the national- and EU-levels? This episode looks into the development of public opinion towards European social citizenship from 1985 to the present from a birds-eye perspective.

Further readings: 

35 years of public opinion surveys and European social citizenship: What can we conclude?

Measuring social citizenship in social policy outputs, resources and outcomes across EU member states from 1985 to the present

Welfare chauvinism across benefits and services

The pandemic seems to have accelerated the expansion of all kinds of platform work and at the same time, platform work is being increasingly associated with difficult working conditions, health and safety risks, and inadequate levels of income for those that rely on it as a source of living. This podcast episode will shed light on some of the key insights from the second wave of the Internet and Platform work survey conducted in fourteen EU countries in Spring 2021. 

The platform economy in Europe, Results from the second ETUI Internet and Platform Work Survey (IPWS) - Agnieszka Piasna, Wouter Zwysen and Jan Drahokoupil 

The European Union is currently fighting on two main fronts, Covid-19 and climate change, though with skirmishes elsewhere – including migration and the rule of law. While science seems to be slowly gaining the upper hand in the fight against the pandemic, despite setbacks like the latest Omicron attack, Covid-19 continues to hold global society in its grip. But the second nut is even harder to crack. Climate change is rolling out its forces, in the form of floods, droughts, tornados and hurricanes, and striking indiscriminately.

Vanhercke, Spasova et al. (2022) Social policy in the European Union: state of play 2021

Sabato et al. (2022) A ‘Social Imbalances Procedure’ for the EU

In this episode, we had the pleasure of interviewing Caroline de la Porte (Copenhagen Business School), Maurizio Ferrera (Università degli Studi di Milano) and Philippe Pochet (ETUI) on the recent developments in EU Social Policy. The discussion stems from their recent contribution to Transfer. In the second half of the episode, we had the pleasure to talk to Hyojin Seo, the winner of Transfer's young scholar award and her article on labour market segmentation. 

Social Europe 2.0? New prospects after the Porto Social Summit - Maurizio Ferrera

Opening up the Pandora’s Box of EU Social Rights - Caroline de la Porte

Why politics matter - Philippe Pochet

‘Dual’ labour market? Patterns of segmentation in European labour markets and the varieties of precariousness - Hyojin Seo 

EUSocialCit project 

In this episode, we had the honour of discussing with pioneer climate activist in science: Klaus Hasselmann, who laid the foundations for linking climate change to human-made CO2 emissions and has been very recently awarded a Nobel Prize in Physics. 

Show notes:

Klaus Hasselmann und Luisa Neubauer, Kriegen wir das hin? (Zeit online) 

Hasselmann et al. Reframing the Problem of Climate Change - From Zero Sum Game to Win-Win Solutions

The ETUI Education department offers a wide range of high-quality training on key competencies and skills to European Trade Union members. The end goal? Strengthening and expanding the labour movement.

More info: www.etui.org/education

Inequality has been a growing concern in recent years. The internationalisation of production and markets, the rampant financialisation of the economy, the deregulation of labour markets, and the retrenchment of welfare systems are only some of the factors that have been feeding into increased inequality in terms of income, property, job security, and working and living conditions. The weakening of industrial relations institutions has also been regarded as part of this broad picture since trade unions and collective bargaining have usually been considered as vehicles of fairness and capable of reducing or at least containing inequality. This podcast episode revolves around Transfer's issue on Industrial relations and inequality and intends to contribute to this strand of research by investigating the analytical premises and the empirical evidence of such claims.

The issue can be viewed here: https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/trsa/27/1

The resurgence of the social dimension of the EU raises a number of questions: in what way and to what extent has the EU social dimension indeed been strengthened since the adoption of the EPSR? To what extent are newly adopted social policies actually likely to contribute to improving people’s lives, and in particular the lives of those who face precarious working or living conditions? What explains the broad political support of the centre-left and centre-right for this social turn? 

Find out more in Transfer's latest issue on Social Europe

The Covid‑19 pandemic is still causing tremendous human suffering, with serious and long-term implications for people’s health, wellbeing and quality of life as well as for the economy, work and employment overall. In this episode, we will be exploring together with Valeria Pulignano how millions of workers especially in the creative industries have been vulnerable to layoffs and income loss. 

Valeria Pulignano et al.'s publication can be downloaded here: https://www.etui.org/publications/creative-labour-era-covid-19

International trade union organisations, like unions at national level, commonly affirm their commitment to internal democracy. But what does this mean? We will be discussing this with two academic giants, Richard Hyman and Rebecca Gumbrell-McCormick.

Find out more in Rebecca's and Richard's latest article in Transfer: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1024258920938499

In this episode of etui.podcast we will explore the whys and the hows of the Alphabet workers and what this experience means for the wider trade union movement.

Show notes:

Trabsfer article by Stan De Spiegelaere on transnational trade unionism & the Ryanair case https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1024258920921106

De Tocqueville was right about trade unions: they are the schools of democracy

https://medium.com/@ETUI_org/trade-unions-the-schools-of-democracy-93caa690ef71

Despite a spectacular economic reaction to the pandemic crisis, which stands in stark contrast to the austerity-driven response to the 2008 financial and economic crisis, Bart Vanhercke and the co-authors of Bilan Social express concerns about the so-called ‘social affairs players’ being sidelined in the new Recovery and Resilience Facility,  the fuzzy EU commitment to gender issues, the EU response to rising in-work poverty and the setting a new social-ecological contract.

The pandemic's longer-term economic consequences are not clear at this stage. No one can exclude that a real social crisis will quickly follow the vaccination campaign in the headlines. For the time being, however, it’s the unprecedented –and unexpected coordinated response by the EU’s and its 27 Members States and the European Commission that stands out. The EU’s response indeed contributed to mitigate the impact on unemployment (compared to the rest of the world) and demonstrated that the EU can react quickly and forcefully.

The EU Commission has recently released a proposal for a directive on equal pay. Kalina Arabadjieva will unpack the flaws of such a proposal and spell out why women are still, on average, paid less than men.

In this episode, Romuald Jagodzinsk, points out the main takeaways of the 20th-anniversary issue of Benchmarking Working Europe. The Covid-19 pandemic, and the ensuing economic recession, has proved to be the harshest of ‘stress tests’ for the European Union, probing policymakers’ ability and willingness to emerge from this new crisis without repeating the mistakes of the past.

In this episode, Sotiria Theodoropoulou sheds light on the economic developments in Europe since the onset of possibly the deepest recession in European history.  The analysis will contextualize the economic and social challenges of member states and provide a preliminary analysis of the autumn package and the economic policy priorities of the EU.

In this episode, Paula Franklin, Senior Researcher at the ETUI will shed light on how the Covid-19 has heightened and amplified the pre-existing cracks in the healthcare sector, imposing difficult working conditions for (female) health workers.

In this episode, the ETUI's new Research Director, Nicola Countouris, sheds light on the importance of research for strengthening the trade union movement, the short term and long term goals for the Institute's research department, and provides insights on how the pandemic has hit the EU labour markets after decades of deregulation and austerity.

In this episode we talk with Ludovic Voet, Confederal Secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation (www.etuc.org) about the overlooked theme in this current health crisis, which is the migration and refugee crisis and the role trade unions in Europe are playing.  All migrant workers, and particularly the undocumented, are among the least protected. This was true before the crisis, but the health and economic crisis, has acerbated inequalities. We’ve seen some positive reactions to protect and include migrants in Portugal, where the government has said that it will Grant Migrants and Asylum Seekers Full Citizenship Rights During COVID-19 Outbreak and also the case of Italy, where there is a proposal to regularise migrant workers working in the food and agricultural sector. (https://www.etuc.org/en/document/overlooked-migrant-workers-covid-19-crisis) The www.unionmigrantnet.eu portal offers services and information in different languages, and real-time advice from experts. The network also provides a forum for cross-border exchange of best practice. For more information on the European Commission proposal on a new pact for Asylum and Migration, due to release later this year (2020) https://www.europarl.europa.eu/legislative-train/theme-promoting-our-european-way-of-life/file-a-new-pact-on-migration-and-asylum

AI is now widely used to automate business processes and replace labour-intensive tasks while changing the skill demands for those that remain. How are AI-based tools deployed to monitor worker conduct and to automate HR management processes? Through the dual lens of comparative labour law and employment relations research, our guest investigate the role of collective bargaining and government policy in shaping strategies to deploy new digital and AI-based technologies at work.

More about the special issue: https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/trsa/29/1

At the end of April 2020, in the EU27 there were more than 42 million applications for support for workers on short-time work or similar schemes. This corresponds to almost 27 percent of all employees. If one includes the United Kingdom and Switzerland, the number of applications for short-time work rises to more than 50 million. 

Dr. Torsten Müller of ETUI and Prof. Dr. Thorsten Schulten, head of the WSI collective agreements archive talk about their recent study on "Ensuring fair Short-Time Work - a European overview" in a conversation with Elisa Bruno of the ETUI.  

More info: https://www.etui.org/Publications2/Policy-Briefs/European-Economic-Employment-and-Social-Policy/Ensuring-fair-Short-Time-Work-a-European-overview

In this episode we look at the struggle of platform workers during the COVID19 pandemic with Jan Drahokoupil, senior researcher at the ETUI. From the issue of health and safety at the workplace to the recent strikes in the Amazon factories in the US and in Europe, Jan talks us through what the EU is doing in this field.  

Before the Covid19 crisis: estimates on the extent of platform work (according to ETUI) found that a significant share of the population in Europe has some experience with platform work, but it probably did not exceed 20% of adults by 2019 (https://www.etui.org/Publications2/Working-Papers/Digital-labour-in-central-and-eastern-Europe-evidence-from-the-ETUI-Internet-and-Platform-Work-Survey).

Finally, Jan talks to us about his role as a Member of the Economic advisory board of the Crisis response team of the Czech government. We get to know what is the Czech Republic doing to fight the crisis and sustain its economy and workers.

In the 8th episode of etui.podcast, Aída Ponce Del Castillo, senior researcher at the ETUI talks with Elisa Bruno (ETUI) about her recent policy brief on Covid-19 and contact-tracing apps (https://www.etui.org/Publications2/Policy-Briefs/European-Economic-Employment-and-Social-Policy/Covid-19-contact-tracing-apps-how-to-prevent-privacy-from-becoming-the-next-victim). The topic of contact-tracing with apps emerged very early in tackling the pandemic in the Asian countries and it was rapidly implemented in Singapore and South Korea. We get to talk about the implementation of contact-tracing apps in Europe, at government and at the company level, and the implications on the privacy of citizens and workers. Trade unions should be at the forefront in trying to assess and negotiate the use of contact-tracing apps at the workplace. Aida gives very hand-on indications on what unions can do to protect workers from live in a surveillance work-environment. 

In the 7th episode, Silvia Rainone, legal researcher, in conversation with Elisa Bruno (ETUI) about the EU recovery plans and the different instruments put in place at EU level to save the economy and the labour market following the coronavirus outbreak.  This episode gives a detailed overview from the resercher's perspective of all the instruments the EU has deployed to help Member States during the pandemic, and it digs into the implications on the world of work and labour law.   Don't miss the important facts at the end of the podcast when the discussion turns around Italy, Silvia describes the measures taken at national level, their impact on the world of work and the role of the trade union movement in the Italian case.

Philippe Pochet (directeur général de l'ETUI, Institut syndical européen) discute avec Mehmet Koksal et développe ses arguments sur les quatre scénarios pour l'avenir de l'Europe après la crise.  L'article est disponsible en EN sur Four scenarios for Europe’s future after the crisis - https://www.socialeurope.eu/four-scenarios-for-europes-future-after-the-crisis et prochainement en FR sur Alternatives économiques 

Le coup de coeur de Philippe Pochet: Les routes de la soie [The Silk Roads] de Peter Frankopan

In this episode we talk to Ilaria Costantini, Education Officer at the ETUI about trade union education and how it is evolving in this time of crisis.  The ETUI organizes training activities for trade unionists across Europe and Ilaria talks to us about the online courses the ETUI has developed.  What are the main differences between the online and face-to-face courses? What are the advantages and disadvantages of organizing online courses?  For more information about these courses: https://www.etui.org/Training/On-line-courses 

For the 4th episode of the etui.podcast series, we talk to Bela Galgoczi, senior researcher at the ETUI about the two crisis humanity is facing:the climate crisis and the health crisis. He walks us through the differences and similarities between the two crisis, in both the way the public opinion and governments are reacting to them both. We go on to talk about the European Green New Deal and how COVID19 is affecting the European Commission's plan to move forward with this new initiative. Finally, we talk about the situation in Hungary and the attack on fundamental rights in the country. Fact sheet on the episode available here: https://medium.com/@ETUI_org/episode-4-en-covid19-and-the-climate-crisis-their-interconnections-and-how-we-can-learn-from-83e4d910d72a?sk=dc2f620bdc533957edef1b72a209ccff

In this third episode we talk with Zane Rasnača, a senior researcher specializing in labour law at the ETUI and an affiliated member at the Institute for European Law (KU Leuven) about social protection for highly mobile workers in the EU. What are the rules which apply to them in normal times and now under COVID-19, what has changed. Then we move on and talk about Latvia. Zane will guide us through the measures put into place by the government in response to the Coronavirus and also what the trade unions are doing to protect workers and jobs, with some specific examples (i.e. AirBaltic). Finally, we talk about the attack on the rule of law and fundamental rights in Europe from different countries.

Laurent Vogel (chercheur sénior à l'ETUI, Institut syndical européen) en conversation avec Mehmet Koksal (ETUI) sur l'angle santé et sécurité au travail de la crise du Covid-19. 

Voici le lien au livre qui Laurent Vogel mentionne à la fin du podcast: COVID-19 ÉDITION AUGMENTÉE DU 6 AVRIL 2020 UN VIRUS TRÈS POLITIQUE

This is the first episode of the ETUI.podcast series on "voices on the world of work".  In this episode we talk about how COVID19 is re-shaping our societies and the world of work. What are unions doing, can role can they play and what can be the impact on the world of work in the years to come. We talk with Stan de Spiegelaere, senior researcher at the ETUI and Guest professor at the University of Ghent, about Belgium and what does it mean democracy at work in times of a crisis.

Here the resources Stan de Spiegelaere mentions at the end of the podcast.

Books:

• No Shortcuts, Organizing for power in the new gilded age, by Jane McAlevey
• A collective bargain. Unions, organizing and the fight for democracy, by Jane McAlevey

Mooc:

• Trade unions in transformation. Iversity
• International labour Standards: how to use them. Iversity.

There are almost 2.6 million domestic workers in Europe working in private homes or others. Though representing a huge and vital workforce, their economic and social contribution has often been denied and they are longing for recognition. Although domestic workers are finally enjoying more social rights, trade unions have a key role to play to achieve improved working conditions for domestic workers within and across borders.

How can the European Union steer a course towards long-term social and ecological well-being in the context of incessant emergencies? Two decades of perpetual crisis management have greatly eroded Europe’s capacity to pursue a sustainable future, as considerations of short-term expediency continue to hamper the four necessary transitions – green, digital, geopolitical and socio-economic.

Find out more in Benchmarking Working Europe 2023

Until recently, the discussion of social welfare systems in Europe was disconnected from ecological concerns and policies. The relevant objectives, instruments and actors were largely different. Environmental and climate science, on the one hand, and the analysis and theoretical foundations of welfare systems, on the other, emerged and developed in disparate silos. While the welfare state was designed to reduce social risks and ensure (relative) stability of income and societies, it was also created as an institution that favours economic growth and the maintenance of income and consumption. Its aim was not to change behaviour but to maintain it, with a focus on redistribution. With environmental inequalities increasingly embedded in social ones, environmental policies are becoming social policies, and vice-versa.

Find out more in the recent Transfer Issue

Advanced capitalist societies seem to limp from one existential crisis to the next, becoming ever more fragile and unstable. Yet the dominant theoretical frameworks in political economy view capitalism as fundamentally stable or, at most, subject to incremental change. Baccaro, Blyth and Pontusson emphasise the diversity of capitalist trajectories or, rather, growth models. 

How should we think about modern capitalism? A growth models approach - Transfer article -  Lucio Baccaro, Mark Blyth, and Jonas Pontusson

The book: Diminishing Returns, The New Politics of Growth and Stagnation - Mark Blyth, Jonas Pontusson, and Lucio Baccaro

One should be careful using the word ‘historic’. But in the case of the directive on adequate minimum wages in the European Union it might actually be appropriate.

Minimum wage directive boost to struggling workers

Energy now costs month’s wages for low paid

EU confirms prices not wages driving inflation

The European minimum wage on the doorstep - Torsten Müller & Thorsten Schulten

Minimum-wages directive—history in the making - Torsten Müller & Thorsten Schulten

Even in Continental Europe, trade unions are the most powerful voice defending outsiders in welfare state politics, and reducing their institutional power in unemployment insurance and elsewhere will likely make things worse for outsiders and not – as certain political leaders in these countries often imply – make things better.

Unemployment benefit governance, trade unions and outsider protection in conservative welfare states - Daniel Clegg, Elke Heins, Philip Rathgeb

This year, after a long and embattled process, the EU adopted new rules to improve working conditions on digital labour platforms, particularly regarding employment status and the use of algorithmic management.  

The European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) has called the 2024 Platform Work Directive ‘a policy milestone’ and ‘a testament to the resilience of collective efforts’.  

Discussion with Tea Jarc, ETUC Confederal Secretary, and Silvia Rainone, ETUI Senior Researcher, about what exactly is in the Directive, what it took to get it passed, and what it means for the millions of people working through digital platforms today. 

Further reading  

⁠The EU Platform Work Directive | etui⁠  

⁠Inevitable, vulnerable, unprofitable: an inquiry into food delivery platforms in Europe | etui⁠  

⁠Digital labour platforms and migrant workers | etui⁠  

⁠Exercising workers' rights in algorithmic management systems | etui⁠  

⁠Juggling online gigs with offline jobs | etui⁠  

⁠Collective bargaining in the platform economy | etui⁠  

⁠The platform economy in Europe | etui⁠  

⁠Platform Economy | ETUC⁠ 

An anniversary can be a good occasion for reflection.

20 years ago, in 2004, eight central and eastern European countries joined the European Union. Followed by the accession of Bulgaria and Romania in 2007 and Croatia in 2013, these successive enlargements nearly doubled the number of EU Member States. And they came with many hopes for economic and social cohesion, as well as for strengthened industrial relations in the region.

So to what extent have these hopes been met?  

Discussion with Vera Scépanović, lecturer in International Relations and European Studies at Leiden University and co-editor of Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research, the ETUI’s quarterly journal published by Sage Publishing.

This conversation is based on the issue of Transfer, ‘20 years after: perspectives on industrial relations in Central and Eastern Europe 20 years after the EU enlargement’.

The standard 40-hour work week has been around for a while now as our full-time norm. But in recent times, debates about working time reduction appear to have been making somewhat of a comeback – particularly in the form of the 4-day week idea.

Is it time to rethink our working time norms? And what role is the labour movement playing in this debate?

Discussion with Agnieszka Piasna, ETUI Senior Researcher and co-author of the paper ‘Negotiating working time reduction’.

Further reading  

Negotiating working time reduction | etui

‘Winning back our time’, in HesaMag#29, Navigating the AI revolution | etui

Friday on my mind - Working time in the manufacturing sector | etui

The why and how of working time reduction | etui

Security is the watchword across European politics today.

But what is the place for social and environmental policy in a security-conscious, or even security-driven, Europe?

And where does the trade union movement fit in?

Discussion with ETUI Senior Researcher Christophe Degryse about his recent Foresight Brief, ‘What if? A socio-environmental agenda in a 'security Europe'?’

Further reading   

What if? A socio-environmental agenda in a 'security Europe'? | etui

Rethinking social protection in the green transition | etui

Industrial policy for quality jobs and a just transition | etui

Social policy in the European Union: state of play 2023 | etui

Amidst all the current debates in Europe about competitiveness, productivity, migration, and economic transitions – both ‘green’ and ‘digital’ - the ongoing issue of labour shortages has emerged as a major policy concern, intrinsically tied to all of the above.

But what are the major factors driving these shortages? Where do we see them the most? And what kinds of solutions would be the most effective?  

Discussion with ETUI Senior Researcher Wouter Zwysen, author of multiple recent papers on labour shortages, job quality, and workers' bargaining power.

Further reading:

⁠Labour shortages, job quality and workers’ bargaining power | etui⁠

⁠Labour shortages – turning away from bad jobs | etui⁠

⁠Monopsony and non-competitive labour markets | etui⁠

⁠Benchmarking Working Europe 2024 | etui⁠

⁠Wage inequality in Europe | etui

Lowering wage inequality through collectively negotiated minima | etui⁠

⁠Green transition and job quality: risks for worker representation | etui

Industrial policy for quality jobs and a just transition | etui⁠

⁠What are governments doing about low-wage employment – and how successful is it? | etui⁠

⁠Job quality in turbulent times | etui

‘Invest now or deindustrialise’ was the recent, stark warning put to the EU by industrial trade unions.

Continued heavy losses in manufacturing jobs over the past decades are now culminating in what has been termed a crisis for European industry and the many workers it employs.

But how should this crisis be addressed? Is the European Commission taking the right approach with the recently presented Clean Industrial Deal? And what could a worker-friendly European industrial policy look like today?

Discussion with Judith Kirton-Darling, General Secretary of the industrial workers’ federation ⁠industriAll Europe⁠, and Ludovic Voet, Confederal Secretary at the European Trade Union Confederation.

Further reading

Industrial policy for quality jobs and a just transition | etui

Benchmarking Working Europe 2024 | etui

Green transition and job quality: risks for worker representation | etui

Workers and the climate challenge | etui

The future of the automotive sector | etui

Provisions for social conditionality, employment security and anticipation and management of change in the Clean Industrial Deal 

ETUC calls for adequate financing and responsible simplification in the Clean Industrial Deal | ETUC

To close this season, etui.podcast went a little further afield than usual to take a look at the United States labour relations landscape with Kayla Blado, who recently served as Director of Congressional and Public Affairs at the US National Labor Relations Board.  

In our chat she offered some insights from her experience at the federal agency, into the recent, particularly volatile chapter in US politics, and into the country’s industrial relations system more broadly. 

Interested in hearing some more of our interviews? Take a look back at this and previous seasons of etui.podcast here. 

The European Commission recently launched an evaluation of the 2014 directives which shape the rules around public procurement, the process by which public contracts are put out to tender. 

Trade unions have called for a revision that ensures the inclusion of criteria based on quality, rather than only price. In particular, they have argued that these rules can be used as a tool to improve labour conditions and promote collective bargaining, rather than allowing some employers to be undercut by those who show less respect for workers’ rights and trade union engagement.  

Discussion with Niklas Bruun, professor of law at the Hanken School of Economics in Helsinki, about his recent paper for the ETUI on how EU public procurement law can be improved. 

Stan De Spiegelaere, Director of Policy and Research at UNI Europa, the trade union federation of service workers, lends some further insight into how the current problems play out on the ground.  

Further reading

Promoting collective bargaining in public procurement | etui

Collective bargaining and public procurement in Germany | etui

Procuring Decent Work - UNI Europa

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 on platform work and how workers are resisting digitised exploitation. In this first episode, Ben Wray looks at what algorithmic management is, how it affects workers and what data tools and tactics workers can use to 'negotiate the algorithm'.

The episode is based on a trade union manual to Negotiating the Algorithm published by the ETUC in September, which you can download here: https://www.etuc.org/en/publication/fair-platforms-project-thematic-reports

Structure

• 00:00 - 00:58: Introduction 
• 00:59 - 03:33: Part 1: What is algorithmic management? 
• 03:34 - 08:35: Part 2: What problems do workers face from algorithmic management? 
• 08:36 - 12:07: Part 3: How do workers ‘negotiate the algorithm’? 
• 12:08 - 19:50: Part 4: What are workers’ data tools? 
• 19:51 - 22:03: Part 5: How do unions build their data capacities? 
• 22:04 - 23:55: Conclusion  

Credits 

Background music: ‘Embrace’, by Evgeny Bardyuzha (downloaded with a creative commons licence from pixabay.com) 

Interviews were conducted in-person with Fiachra Ó Luain, Lucie Morpurgo and Daniel Cruz in Nicosia, Cyprus, September 2025. Thanks to all. 

Ben Wray (2022). ’Data Power in the gig economy: Interview with data expert Jessica Pidoux’. The Gig Economy Project.https://open.spotify.com/episode/0XwcoHYn2FkcmHPU2FQbrU 

Ben Wray (2022). ‘Algorithms, Work and the European Directive: Interview with James Farrar and Sergi Cutillas’. The Gig Economy Project.https://open.spotify.com/episode/3UEBpCVRN3bRjw14Xu1YGX 

Sarah Beckmann (2023), ‘The Shipt Calculator: Crowdsourcing Gig Worker Pay Data to Audit Algorithmic Management’. MIT Media.https://www.media.mit.edu/videos/hd-shipt-app-tracker-2023-02-22/ 

Eric Gardner (2024). 'NEW: We put 7 Uber & Lyft drivers in one room and had them open their apps.’ More Perfect Union.https://x.com/MorePerfectUS/status/1833187863498002850 

The Modern Mann (2025). ‘Interview: Revenge Of Gig Worker Armin Samii’. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjgKL7z4Ovw 

Bethany Staunton, Silvia Rainone (2025). ‘What makes the Platform Work Directive a milestone? (etui.podcast)’. ETUI.https://www.etui.org/news/what-makes-platform-work-directive-milestone-etuipodcast