Not any job is a sure route out of poverty. Many people experiencing poverty or social exclusion do, in fact, hold a job, and yet this is insufficient to prevent them from enduring hardship and isolation. In order for employment to fulfil its role, of effectively shielding people from a life in poverty, it needs to fulfil a set of quality criteria. EAPN has produced these 10 principles on what constitutes a quality job.
10 PRINCIPLES ON QUALITY WORK
EAPN believes that people have the right to a job which:
- Provides adequate / living wages. This needs to build on a positive hierarchy, which includes adequate minimum income as reference point (at least at the level of the poverty line). Poverty traps must be avoided and transitions supported.
- Provides a sustainable contract and adequate employment rights, ensuring protection against arbitrary dismissal and adequate severance pay, so as to fight the increased precariousness and segmentation of the labour market.
- Entitles the worker to appropriate social security protection, such as health insurance, paid holidays, unemployment benefits, pension rights, etc, and provides for the cross-border portability of these rights.
- Ensures quality working conditions and working environment. This includes the implementation of health and safety provisions, adapted working environments for key groups, reasonable working time and shift arrangements – particularly regarding low-skilled jobs.
- Allows for the reconciliation of private and professional life, including by providing opportunities for flexible working time arrangements.
- Respects the right to participate in collective bargaining and social dialogue, for workers to have a say in changes of policy and practice that affect them, and to ensure meaningful participation and transparency in governance.
- Protects the worker against discrimination on all grounds , both in obtaining a job as well as at the work place, fighting against the ethnic and gender pay gap and other inequalities.
- Guarantees access to training and personal development, building upon and valorizing existing skills, and providing workers with opportunities to further develop their personal and professional competences, as well as soft skills.
- Allows for progression in work and features opportunities for advancement.
- Nurtures job satisfaction, as an essential component of people’s well being.
EAPN holds these principles as valid for any kind of job,
regardless of the type of contractual arrangement,
as well as for protected or intermediate labour market workshops,
social economy and work integration social enterprises (WISEs),
and for all sectors of activity.
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These principles were developed by EAPN’s Employment Working Group during the first part of 2011 and were endorsed by EAPN’s Executive Committee in December 2011. For more information, contact Amana Ferro, EAPN Policy Officer: amana.ferro@eapn.eu
