ETUC demands for the Quality Jobs Roadmap
Adopted at the Extraordinary Executive Committee meeting of 18 June 2025
The European Commission announced that it will put forward a Quality Jobs Roadmap, developed following consultation with the social partners. During the first hearings held in April and May 2025, it was announced that the roadmap would support through legislative and non-legislative measures collective bargaining, fair wages, good working conditions, training, and fair job transitions.
This resolution sets out the ETUC’s demands for this package and will be submitted as the trade union’s position to the social partners’ consultation launched by the Commission and the deadline for which is 1 July 2025.
The Quality Jobs Package must include the legislative initiatives, investments, and action programmes necessary to ensure high-quality jobs across all sectors and regions. Indicators for quality jobs should also be added to monitor developments and effectiveness of the measures deployed.
These measures should be presented as soon as possible. It is unacceptable that the Commission has promptly launched a series of omnibus initiatives to satisfy employers’ organisations through deregulation, while measures aimed at improving working conditions are being postponed until 2026.
The ETUC wishes to reiterate its position on the essential elements that a definition of quality jobs must include: collective bargaining; full respect for workers’ and trade union rights; fair wages; job security and career progression; social protection; training free of charge and during working hours; good working conditions; health and safety at the workplace; work-life balance; equality and non-discrimination.
The Quality Jobs Package must include, among others, the following key legislative initiatives:
a) A Directive on Just Transition in the world of work, through the anticipation and management of change, based on the principles of trade union involvement and collective bargaining, ensuring the right to free training during working hours—supported by a SURE 2.0 mechanism.
b) Regulation of labour intermediaries and the introduction of an EU-wide legal framework to limit subcontracting and ensure joint and several liability throughout the subcontracting chain.
c) A European Directive preventing psychosocial risks and online harassment and shaming at work.
d) Effective regulation of AI, incorporating the ‘human in control’ principle into EU law through a Directive on AI in the workplace.
e) A Directive on Telework and the Right to Disconnect.
f) Reinforcing democracy at work in the first place by strengthening collective bargaining, introducing a comprehensive EU framework on information, consultation and participation for European company forms and for companies making use of EU company law instruments enabling company mobility, and fully safeguarding well-functioning collective bargaining systems.
g) Ensuring that the revision of public procurement Directives guarantees that public funds go to organisations that respect workers’ and trade union rights, engage in collective bargaining, and whose workers are covered by collective agreements.
h) Ending precarious work by guaranteeing legal rights to permanent contracts and full-time employment, banning zero-hours contracts trough guaranteeing a minimum working time through binding legislation, and preventing unpaid traineeships.
These demands must be addressed through new legislation, not merely amendments to existing Directives or Regulations, in order to avoid jeopardising in the light of the current political context existing rights and protections for workers.
Investments for Quality Jobs
The ETUC has long highlighted the consequences of chronic underinvestment in quality jobs, industrial policy, public services, social progress, and just transition for working people. Mario Draghi recently acknowledged in his report on the Future of European Competitiveness the need for additional investments exceeding €800 billion per year.
Austerity policies must be rejected. Moreover, they have proven to be failures both socially and economically. Instead, the EU must develop ambitious common investment tools, implement progressive taxation policies, and provide Member States with the necessary fiscal space to finance investments in quality jobs, industrial policy, public services, and just transitions. It is essential to establish a new fiscal capacity for investment, an EU Investment Facility for just socio-economic transition and common goods, ensuring that no one and no region is left behind.
Crucially, public investment and support to companies must come with social conditionalities to ensure the creation of quality jobs. These should build on the recommendations of the Letta and Draghi Reports and introduce social conditionalities for EU funds, business support instruments, and state aid, as well as environmental and tax conditionalities.
The ETUC calls for an EU-financed Investment Facility for quality jobs and just transitions, as well as a European industrial policy focused on quality employment.
This should be achieved through:
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Safeguarding and increasing the budget for the ESF+ and social cohesion in the context of the new Multiannual Financial Framework.
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Ensuring continued and enhanced support for trade unions, social dialogue, collective bargaining, and capacity building for social partners at both EU and national levels, including additional resources.
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Establishing a SURE 2.0 scheme - similar to the one that preserved jobs during the pandemic - to prevent job losses and losses in economic capacity during temporary crises such as those caused by high energy costs, tariffs and to support just transitions and the anticipation and management of change.
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Ensuring that the European Semester process is aligned with the delivery of the European Pillar of Social Rights, including through the upward social convergence framework, and does not exert downward pressure on wages and collective bargaining.
Against deregulation
Any initiatives under the banner of “better regulation” must be compatible with, and contribute to, the objective of delivering quality jobs.
The Competitiveness Compass, the Single Market Strategy and the EU Startup and Scaleup Strategy lack the necessary guarantees that workers’ rights, pay, and conditions will not be negatively affected by the deregulation and simplification agenda. We strongly oppose any deregulation efforts that would undermine employment rights and standards — particularly the proposal for a 28th company regime. This proposal, which would allow certain companies to operate outside national labour laws, risks undermining employment legislation and collective bargaining across Europe.
Better regulation should focus on better enforcement and more inspections. High-quality jobs, good working conditions, social dialogue, and collective bargaining must be at the core of the European approach to competitiveness. The Draghi Report rightly recognised the value of the European social model and emphasised that promoting competitiveness should not rely on “wage repression to lower relative costs”. ETUC recalls that the joint social partners approach to sustainability, growth and competitiveness of the EU’s social market economy is that it should be built on robust democratic institutions, environmental sustainability, inclusive communities, social justice, quality jobs and services, thriving companies of all sizes, services of general interest, high-quality public services and strong social protection systems.
Addressing the situation of vulnerable groups in the labour market
The Quality Jobs Roadmap must incorporate targeted measures to facilitate the integration of vulnerable groups into the labour market. It is essential to ensure that all workers, regardless of their background, are not confined to low-quality or precarious forms of employment.
Migrant workers must be guaranteed full equal treatment, fair and decent conditions for accessing employment, thereby preventing all forms of discrimination. Furthermore, the Roadmap should promote enhanced intra-EU mobility for individuals who already possess valid residence or work permits. It should also include concrete steps towards the regularisation of undocumented migrant workers, ensuring that their integration into the labour market is accompanied by access to quality employment. The rights of posted workers should be strengthened, particularly through the reinforcement of the European Labour Authority and the creation of a counselling network for mobile and migrant workers.
A gender-sensitive approach must be embedded in both the legislative and non-legislative measures foreseen in the Roadmap. This includes the promotion of collective bargaining in non-standard sectors such as domestic and care work. The persistent gender pay gap must be addressed through binding measures that promote pay transparency and ensure the effective implementation of the principle of equal pay for work of equal value, by promoting the access and promotion of women particularly in sectors where they are underrepresented, as well as through measures to combat the employment and occupational gap.
Young people are disproportionately employed in sectors characterised by part-time work, seasonal and precarious contracts, and undeclared labour. The Youth Guarantee remains a tool with significant potential to promote youth employment. However, its success is contingent upon the meaningful involvement of sectoral, national, and European social partners in its design, implementation, and monitoring. Moreover, the offers made under the Youth Guarantee must be anchored in quality criteria. Adoption of Traineeship Directive establishing standards for quality traineeships and prohibiting unpaid internships is of paramount importance.
The situation of persons with disabilities in the European labour market remains critical. The measures outlined in the European Strategy for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities must be rendered binding; otherwise they risk remaining unimplemented. This includes the obligation to provide reasonable accommodation in the workplace, the establishment of retention schemes, the elimination of the practice of paying workers with disabilities below the minimum wage, and the reinforcement of existing EU Directives on non-discrimination in employment.
Finally, the Quality Jobs Roadmap should enshrine the concept of a European Job Guarantee. Such a mechanism would provide employment opportunities for the long-term unemployed through publicly funded programmes, specifically targeting job seekers who are unable to secure employment in the open labour market.