European Telework Information Day Brussels - 28th May 1998 Report By Jeremy Millard ETD Programme Manager

The European Policy Context: the Social Dialogue on Telework

In introducing Ms. Sylvest, Mr. Johnston noted that one of the greatest problems we have in Europe is the acceptance of new working practices by all parts of society. DGV's facilitating role in exploring the need and direction for change of the social frameworks is therefor very important.

Vibeke Sylvest opened by underlining the view of DGV that telework is a specific form of work organisation, the modernisation of which is central to our continued economic and social well being. The issue of the new organisation of work, including telework, must be dealt with in the wider context of European employment and social policy, and this approach has made remarkable progress in 1997 across a variety of fronts.

Firstly, the Amsterdam Treaty has taken the EU a significant step forward through the introduction of a new specific chapter dealing with employment, so that although responsibility for employment policies still lies within Member States, there is also now clear political will to bring about a new and better balanced employment policy. The Treaty also has an integrated and enhanced social chapter in which the integration of the Social Protocol within a single coherent framework will enable the social partners to meet in full their responsibilities and potential as agents of change within the EU.

Secondly, the Job Summit of November 1997 contributed to a convergence process based upon agreed quantified and comparable targets, and on clear priorities to which this process would be applied in the form of guidelines for Member States' employment policies for 1998, built on the pillars of:

• entrepreneurship
• employability
• adaptability
• equal opportunities

By adding time scales and targets to aspirations and by placing responsibility for implementation squarely where it belongs with the Member States and the social partners, the Job Summit has created a methodology for improving employment performance across the Union. This process is now well underway as all Member States have submitted National Action Plans on the basis of the Job Summit's agreements and commitments, and in each case the social partners have been engaged in the process.

Thirdly, and perhaps the most important in relation to telework, is the 1997 Green Paper on the Partnership for a New Organisation of work, which has generated a debate of the highest quality on the future shape of working life in Europe. The purpose of the Green Paper was to assist Member States and the social partners to consider how best to effect the modernisation of the legal, contractual and institutional framework for the organisation of work, as well as to identify and help develop the role of the social partners in this process. Three factors of change were cited by the Green Paper: the new generation of Europe's workforce consisting of well trained people who are more innovative and more able and willing to take new responsibilities the consumers of goods and services who are more demanding than ever before technological advance, with especially information and communication technologies having a fundamental affect on the way we organise the production of goods and services and thereby on work itself.

These factors are essential components of the new conditions we need to accept and exploit in work and across social and economic life in the future. We are still in the early stages of a fundamental shift from the technology of mass production in manufacturing industries to the technology of the Information Society, which also involves a shift in the organisation of enterprises and of work itself. New skills and competencies are required to meet new and different demands on the workforce, and this means that we need to renew the structures and agreements which govern the organisation of work in local small scale services and industries, just as much as in large organisations.

The Green Paper generated well over 150 detailed and well prepared responses, and this shows that a large number of people and organisations took its contents and purpose very seriously. Even more important than the quantity of responses, however, was the work and the thought which lay behind each one. In companies, trades unions and national representative organisations across Europe, the Green Paper has provoked serious consideration of the changes taking place in working life and of the frameworks and systems which govern the organisation of work. The central theme of the Green Paper is that the old debate of regulation versus deregulation is out-dated and sterile. By endorsing the adaptability pillar of the employment guidelines at the Job Summit, the Member States took on this agenda and demonstrated that they shared the Green Paper view that we need to rely much more in the future on partnership and on the workplace reality that only the social partners can bring to bear on the process of modernisation.

There is strong support for the policy direction the Commission has presented in the Green Paper of replacing the old agenda of piecemeal initiatives with a new holistic approach covering all the issues of importance for enterprises and workers. The Green Paper process has confirmed that partnership and constructive strategic dialogue needs to become the primary tools for the modernisation of work. For the essential process of integrating skills, technology and work organisation we need a framework strategy which can best be developed and applied if it is a product of informed dialogue and equal partnership between the social partners. The question is whether the social partners are prepared and able to accept this challenge.

Ms. Sylvest then outlined the next steps. On 2 June 1998 there will be a Social Dialogue Summit where the social partners will meet with the Commission in advance of the Cardiff Summit later in June to discuss the future of the social dialogue in terms of its contribution to employment and work organisation policies. An important initiative, in the form of a communication on work organisation and adaptability, was announced in the Commission's new Social Action Programme which was adopted in April 1998 and covers the period from 1998 to the year 2000. This communication, which is planned to be adopted in October 1998, will distil and respond to the debate the Green Paper has created and will present new initiatives to be taken in the future.

In terms of the social dialogue on telework and the issues it raises, DGV together with the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions carried out in 1995-6 a major piece of comparative research on the social implications of telework. Experts drew up about 45 national reports covering the three themes of labour law, social security and occupational health and safety, the results of which provided the working papers for a conference on the social implications of telework which was held in Brussels in 1996. The study and subsequent analysis showed that most Member States have no specific rules for dealing with telework, although in some a number of collective agreements have been reached. The use of legislation to regulate telework is not a priority for any government, and there are problems in arriving at notions of a suitable status for teleworkers. For example, it is not easy to assess what telework means in social policy terms as so many factors need to be taken into account, such as is the person an employee or self-employed, and is that person therefore covered or not by employee legislation?

Telework raises a vast range of issues, including how to apply fundamental rights such as:

• privacy
• inviolability of the home
• equality and equal opportunity at work, for example between men and women, where telework reproduces the patterns familiar in other types of work, such as the fact that women are over-represented in unskilled and low qualified jobs and men are over-represented in the high qualification areas.
• data protection
• collective negotiation rights
• working conditions, such as the voluntary nature of work, forms of contract, working hours, promotion, training, inspection, and cultural and monetary differences
  
• social security implications, such as lack of cover for the self-employed teleworker and thresholds for entitlement to benefits
• health and safety implications, including the fact that teleworkers are notably vulnerable to stress, social isolation and occupational illnesses. It should be noted that health and safety is one of the areas where least research has been done into the experience of teleworkers
• the trans-border nature of telework, as telework by its very nature can involve work which straddles frontiers since it can be carried out in one country and easily transferred to another.

The trans-national nature of telework is of special significance as firms develop economic relationships across the globe, and since the impact of globalisation on the workforce means that notions of nation, culture and territory mean relatively little, the European Union is brought into the picture. The disassociation between the teleworker's virtual on-line presence and physical residence status poses three main challenges:

• the law applicable
• the competent jurisdiction
• the enforcement mechanisms.

The successful development of telework which benefits the individual, industry and society as a whole, must take into consideration these aspects. Given this background, the Green Paper requests public authorities and the social partners to consider how telework and related techniques can bring about a net increase in work opportunities for Europeans in such a way that the overall quality of working life is enhanced.

It can be concluded from the consultation process on the Green Paper that it is commonly agreed that telework is here to stay, and that companies and their workforces are developing innovative ways of distance working. However, there are different views as to how significant it will become as a form of work organisation. Neither trades unions nor employers' organisations are calling for national or European legislation specifically covering telework, although both underline the need to address issues such as voluntarism, the right to return to on-site work, privacy protection, proper equipment standards, hours of work, and remuneration in the field of telework. One of the challenges of telework specifically mentioned is the need to separate working and living environments.

In its communication People First - the Next Steps, adopted in the summer of 1997, and in its Social Action Programme 1998-2000, the Commission has announced that it will consult the social partners in 1998 on the need for European action on the protection of teleworkers. As telework is a specific form of work organisation, this consultation process will be initiated after the communication on work organisation and adaptability adopted in October 1998. It is expected that a consultation document will aim to give an overview of the social dimension of telework within the European Union in order to identify the horizontal and specific problems of the legal and contractual framework of telework, especially in the fields of labour law, social security and occupational health and safety, gender issues, and trans-border work.

Within the social dialogue at European sector level, the Joint Committee on Telecommunications has already agreed that telework will be the first of their priority areas for 1998. The social dimension of telework has also been given a central place on the agenda of the Fifth European Assembly on Telework and New Ways of Working in Lisbon in September 1998. Ms. Sylvest expressed the hope that the social dimension of telework and the social dialogue on telework will also play an important role in the European Telework Week events.

Mr. Johnston summed up Ms. Sylvest's presentation by noting that the task of DGV is unenviable as not only does telework pose a set of innovative and difficult issues for the social dialogue but that it is also a moving target. For example, when telework was considered some 3-4 years ago, no-one anticipated the degree to which mobile working using mobile communications would become a dominant new form of work organisation. Unfortunately for the social dialogue process, technology development will continue to move ahead just as fast and as unpredictably in the next 5-10 years, so that it is extremely important that this process is well articulated with continuing technology developments.