Work and social protection
Nicole Leonard
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Proposal sent to Nicole by email from Sarah de Heusch from SMART
Here is my short contribution (open to comments and suggestions as it does go form social rights to social protection for instance), thank you for helping me out:
"The European Commission is presently organising a consultation on the European Pillar of Social Rights (EPSR). The mere idea of a european direct approach to social rights is per se a huge progress as it takes into consideration this issue as a european one and not only national ones (as the subsidiarity principle makes Member States "sovereign" in this domain). It also provides ground to reduce the Member States strategy of competition through lowering both cost of labour and social responsibility.
The background papers of this initiative also pin point major challenges of the labour market and social protection systems such as increase in non standard forms of employment (that is employment that are not full-time based nor open-ended contracts), the fast development of new technologies and robotisation with it's threat of reducing drastically the level of employment, the impact of digital platforms etc
Nevertheless, the fact that the EPSR stems from the EU Economic & Monetary Union (EMU) can be preoccupying as:
- If the main concern of this initiative is consolidating the EMU, the issue of a truly strong and equitable social protection model will always be secondary to the monetary objective. And a sound economy doesn't necessarily mean a truly equitable and fair society.
- if the challenges of social protection models are properly identified, the proposed solutions do not provide ground to properly address these challenges. In fact all the european social security systems (highly linked to social rights) are based on monetized activities. Social rights are still linked to work (that is a monetized activity) and the involvement of citizens in commons initiative not addressed.
A fair society also means rewarding socially and ecologically responsible initiatives and their participants. It can be done by recognizing the involvement of citizens in such activities to access to social rights. We have to rethink what work is and acknowledge the needs and aspirations of a growing number of citizens, which aren't only market oriented but aim at building a common better world."
Some believe that social protection is a common...
All the best,
Sarah
Nicole Leonard Mon 31 Oct 2016 1:44PM
Hi Sunna, In fact this proposal came from Sarah, not me. She's easiest to reach by mail, I think she has some trouble using loomio and the pads! If you send her the direct link by email to the pad it might be easier. Her address is [email protected]
Sunna Kovanen Mon 31 Oct 2016 1:16PM
Here is a proposal that i edited on the basis of the questions that we received, combining the inputs of all three pads mentioned above. I prefer editing a text in a pad instead of doing it here but I would wish to get the comments from the others.
The questions that I have not answered yet are:
1. What are the already experimented measures in this field and where (in a particular country? part of Europe? Elsewhere?
3. Who are the actors involved in these struggles ?
4. How could these commons or commoning action be reinforced, scaled up, or replicated?
5. What are the resources needed?
6. Who could do what to move forward?
Comments and edits are warmly welcome!
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Welfare commons as a fundament of work and social protection
The European Commission is presently organising a consultation on the European Pillar of Social Rights (EPSR). The mere idea of a european direct approach to social rights is per se a huge progress as it questions the „sovereignity“ of the Member States in this domain. It also provides ground to reduce the Member States strategy of competition through lowering both cost of labour and social responsibility.
The background papers of this initiative pin point major challenges of the labour market and social protection systems such as increase in non standard forms of employment (that is employment that are not full-time based nor open-ended contracts), the fast development of new technologies and robotisation with it's threat of reducing drastically the level of employment etc.
Therefore a european wide policy on social protection is crucially important, but the fact that the EPSR stems from the EU Economic & Monetary Union (EMU) should not preoccupy the policymaking. If the main concern of this initiative is consolidating the EMU, the issue of a truly strong and equitable social protection model will always be secondary to the monetary objective. A sound economy and growth doesn't necessarily mean a truly equitable society, long-lasting jobs and basic social security.
Securing a basic minimum social security as commons should be a priority as such. Welfare services and social protection as commons are:
- Financed from the public spending
- Universal and self-reproducing fundamentals of a secure, active and innovative society especially for people living in precarious conditions
- Not commercializable without destroying the motivation and value of the work for the whole society
- Strongly questionging the main neoclassical economical theories behind EU´s economic policies: The most productive motive for work is supporting the communities and commons, not money.
The proposed solutions in the EPSR do not provide ground to properly address the challenges of present european social protection models. In fact all the european social security systems are based on monetized activities and work, which results into misundestanding of care as „unproductive expense“ and abuse and underdevelopment of care sector. It also results into outsourcing the care activities to the precarious members of the society and strengthens gender inequities.
Proposals:
Concrete proposal to shift the emphasis of the EPSR from „work for money“ to „work for care“ ? (I have not read it yet)
E.g. include a european-wide right to basic minimun welfare especially with emphasis to gender equality and the support of more flexible work-times and conditions together with better support for employers in female-dominant business areas?Commission shoud design low-treshold funding programms for innovative pilots of service production between self-organizing grassroots actors and public service producers. Small-budget support for the social and solidarity economy sector should be a part of the investment plan.
Nicole Leonard Fri 16 Dec 2016 10:12PM
@sunnakovanen @rubyvanderwekken and others... do you think the group that did this policy proposal wants to do some editing/revising before we publish to the Commons transition wiki?
Sunna Kovanen Sun 1 Jan 2017 8:50PM
Dear Nicole,
I´m sorry for answering so late. I have to ask the others via email. I am pretty much sure it´s ready as it is as long as nobody wants still a clearer targeting to EU- or other welfare policies for all of the published ones. But I´ll get back to you in a week or sooner if I get the anwswers from the others
Nicole Leonard Fri 27 Jan 2017 2:28PM
Hello those working on the work and social protection proposal! Happy new year!
It's been a while since we last spoke but I wanted to get things going again. Not sure if you had a chance to see, but the first proposal for Food has been published on the Commons Transition wiki:
We'd also like to do the same for this Welfare commons proposal - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1i5-Hm-fE56bhs0TIvhCuUrhBVehSplhHDhjWDZzSQEo/edit
Some next steps for your group would be: 1. agreeing on the text 2. after looking at the example above, deciding if you like the formatting. it might be a good idea to add some more subheadings, since that helps for organization and accessibility on a wiki.
Once it's ready, you can communicate with me and @staccotroncoso who is doing the main formatting work and we can get it online. I thought it would be nice to have it ready by February 15 at the latest, so that we can link to it when we publicize the Right to the City video as part of our communications strategy.
Remember, it's a wiki, so there is always space to update the proposal in the future!
Let me know if you have any questions.
Sunna Kovanen · Mon 31 Oct 2016 11:52AM
Dear @nicoleleonard, this is a very good and concrete proposal.
I would include the proposal "feminism, commons and welfare policies" into yours and I will contribute something to the background discussion at least. Our concrete policy proposals, however, may not fit together as well because you are targeting a particular consultation process which I find good, but my proposals were mainly linked to commission's priorities and funding plans more broadly. So I will see if I can integrate some of mine to this document so that they don't expand the target too much.
Maybe if we could develop proposals on concrete funding programms aside the concultation (e.g. investment plan and horizon budgets) and ideas on how to make them more welfare-commons-friendly, that would be a good addition to this.
I seem not to be able to link Francine Mestrum, Sarah Deheusch and Natalia Avlona to this discussion, which is a shame, because they have been working with similar proposals. I will send an email to all in a moment to bring all the care- and work-related threads together.