European unions representing 45 million workers across Europe, including ETUC, UNI Europa, EFFAT and industriAll Europe, have launched a digital billboard campaign in Brussels metro stations Schuman and Arts-Loi today. The billboards show a diverse workforce employed on public contracts – cleaners, manufacturing workers, security guards, care workers and catering workers – calling on Members of the European Parliament in the Internal Market Committee to strengthen collective bargaining in the EU’s ongoing efforts to reform public procurement.
The Committee is currently in negotiations on an own-initiative report – to be voted on 25 June – that will inform the Parliament’s position on the Commission’s reform proposal. Earlier this month, all democratic parties in the Parliament’s Employment Committee adopted an opinion giving preference to companies with collective agreements in procurement.
Oliver Roethig, UNI Europa Regional Secretary, said : “Our campaign shows that fixing the EU’s broken procurement system has the power to improve the lives of millions of workers on public contracts across the EU. The kind of essential workers that clean your office, care for your loved ones, keep you safe. We are watching closely the ongoing negotiations in the Parliament’s IMCO Committee. Their report should support workers’ livelihoods and decent companies that engage in collective bargaining with trade unions.”
Currently, the EU’s procurement rules incentivise procuring authorities to award contracts based on the lowest price only . At the same time, a series of legal barriers prevent more social public procurement, which would for instance mandate public contracts be awarded to companies with collective agreements. The result is a publicly funded race to the bottom for wages and working conditions that undermines competition across economic sectors.
Esther Lynch, ETUC General Secretary, said: “This crucial campaign highlights how Europe’s broken public procurement rules, which put the lowest cost above all other considerations, are driving poverty pay and dangerous conditions. It is time to ensure that companies which receive huge sums of public money act in the public interest, by paying fair wages, funding training and creating jobs rather than simply siphoning off more and more money into the offshore accounts of shareholders. That means that the EU’s public procurement rules must be revised to ensure that public money goes to organisations that respect workers’ and trade union rights, that negotiate with trade unions and whose workers are covered by collective agreements.”
Last week, a UNI Europa research estimated that linking public contracts to collective agreements in the EU’s current revision of procurement rules could help cancel out Trump’s tariffs and boost growth. A Europe-wide survey found that a large majority of EU citizens (72%) are in favour of public procurement that strengthens workers’ livelihoods through collective bargaining, while 83% of citizens want union busters and underpaying companies to be excluded.
Judith Kirton-Darling, General Secretary of industriAll Europe, said : Contracts financed with public money should go to companies that respect workers’ rights and engage into collective bargaining! Industrial workers produce the vehicles, tools and medicines that we all use. They all deserve fair pay and good jobs. It is high time that the EU ensures that public procurement is tied to quality jobs!”
Enrico Somaglia, EFFAT General Secretary, said : “Millions of catering workers serve daily food to our children in public schools, our beloved ones in hospitals and retirement homes, and to all EU staff. They deserve decent pay and working conditions. It is time to ensure that public money only goes to employers that respect workers’ rights and collective bargaining agreements. New public procurement rules must ensure that well-paid contract catering workers serve healthy and quality food, produced in a socially and environmentally sustainable way.”
The billboard campaign is supported by all ten European trade union federations, including UNI Europa, EFFAT and IndustriAll Europe, as well as by the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC).