This event had the support of the EUROPEAN UNION

Seminar documents

The contents of the workshop

The Education Department of the European Trade Union Institute for Research, Education and Health and Safety  and the European Federation of Building and Woodworkers organised a seminar about self-employment and bogus self-employment in the construction industry in Vilnius, Lithuania 7-9th June 2007. This seminar gathered representatives from the construction and wood sector in Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Italy, Norway, Poland, Lithuania, Sweden and the Netherlands.

 The purpose of this seminar was to

Werner Buelen, EFBWW  and Jean-Claude Le Douaron, ETUI-REHS, welcomed the participants and introduced the programme. Massimo Trinci, FENEAL-UIL, vice chair of the Standing Committee Buiding introduced  Mr Minaugas Pluktas, Chief State Labour Inspector of the Republic of Lithuania who on the behalf of the State Secretary explained the state of play of self employment conditions in his country. (Download the presentations from the Seminar documents section of this site).

A general overview of bogus self-employment was provided by Mr Jan Cremers, CLR co-ordinador. Two examples of trade union responses to the growing number of regular self-employed workers and bogus self-employed workers were given by Mr Han Westerhof, FNV ZBo from the Netherlands and Mr Alan Richie, UCAT from the United Kingdom.

Various national definitions and the legal basis of self-employment in Sweden, Italy and Poland were explained by Mr Sven Ljung from the Swedish Building Workers' Union, Mrs Stemperini from the Italian Reseach Center CRESME and Mr Jan Czarzasty from the Polish Institute of Public Affairs.

Bogus self-employment constitutes also a serious problem for trade unions in other sectors. Mr Eric Dresin from EFFAT described the situation in the food sector where unions from several countries like Germany, UK the Netherlands, Spain, Poland and Hungary are facing increasing challenges. In the meat sector terms and conditions are impacted also in other countries by the fierce competition dictated by companies relocating or threatening to relocate their activities across borders to locations where self-employment is not subject to strict regulation.

Conclusions EFBWW-ETUI/REHS seminar

 The EFBWW-ETUI-REHS seminar was the first opportunity for an overall discussion between senior trade unions officials of the construction industry concerning the phenomenon of self-employment in the construction industry. During the seminar all participants highlighted two specific trends: the increase of self-employment on building sites and the real threat of bogus self-employment, which jeopardises existing social standards.

The experiences of the UK trade union UCATT (Alan Ritchie - General Secretary) underlined that trade unions must stop “bogus self-employment”. Since the UK has a long tradition of self-employed workers, these experiences were vital. With the UK there is a strong proven link between increased numbers of self-employed workers and an increasing number of (fatal) accidents on building sites.

Various countries have developed specific initiatives to regulate “self-employment” trough their system of collective bargaining. The Italian model seems to be the most advanced. All Italian trade unions (CGIL, CISL, UIL) have accepted that trade unions should not neglect the self-employed workers in the construction industry.

In almost all countries the legal distinction between “employee” and “self-employed worker” is blurry and open to interpretation. Jan Cremers (CLR-co-ordinator) concluded that in the long term a European definition in unavoidable. An approach which was supported by all participants.

The question whether trade unions should organise “self-employed workers” remained open. On behalf of FNV-Zbo, Han Westerhof explained how the Dutch trade unions organised (with success) the self-employed workers, without staff/employees. Although a few other trade unions are also organising “independent self-employed workers” the vast majority of the participants considered that this would create a “conflict of interest”.

A topic which was also discussed at the seminar was the problem of “bogus self-employment”. All participants agreed that there is a clear need to map all the (good and bad) experiences that member States have adopted to prevent, detect and sanction bogus self-employment. The EFBWW should take a lead in this discussion.

The active participation of EFFAT demonstrated that the increasing problem of “self-employment” is not restricted to the construction industry. The case of human exploitation of the German meat industry presented by Eric Dresin (EFFAT) showed that trade unions should strengthen their internal co-operation in order to tackle bogus self-employment in all sectors.