About Sharan Burrow

Sharan Burrow is general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation.

Sharan Burrow

For workers, another year of living dangerously

by Sharan Burrow on 5th July 2021

Workers have stood on the frontline of the pandemic, but the ITUC Global Rights Index documents an anti-worker agenda. The International Trade … [Read more...]

Vaccine nationalism won’t defeat the pandemic

by Sharan Burrow on 23rd February 2021

International co-operation is vital to make vaccination, as a public good, available to all. To the virus, we are all one herd. To beat it, we … [Read more...]

A new social contract

by Sharan Burrow on 24th June 2020

The 2020 ITUC Global Rights Index exposes the failings of the world’s economic model—a new social contract can help us build a new one. Some … [Read more...]

UN treaty on business and human rights vital for economic and social justice

by Sharan Burrow on 28th October 2019

How can transnational corporations be held to account in a world of nation states? A binding UN treaty would be an important step. The global … [Read more...]

ETUI policy brief: collective bargaining and self-employed workers—the need for a paradigm shift

EU competition law imposes limits on the scope of collective labour law, as it precludes self-employed workers from collective bargaining. There are a rising number of self-employed workers whose livelihoods are characterised by increasing precariousness and whose working conditions could be improved by ensuring that collective agreements fall outside the scope of competition law.

The European Commission intends to reform the scope of EU competition law and this could offer an opportunity to define a new regulatory paradigm. This policy brief discusses a possible reconfiguration of the coexistence between collective bargaining and competition law. Access to collective bargaining should ensure that employing businesses with a dominant bargaining position do not get to define labour conditions.

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Living, working and Covid-19 (update April 2021): mental health and trust decline across EU as pandemic enters another year

The third round of Eurofound's Living, working and Covid-19 e-survey, fielded in February and March 2021, sheds light on the social and economic situation of people across Europe following nearly a full year of living with restrictions. The report analyses the main findings and tracks developments and trends across the 27 EU member states since the survey was first launched in April 2020. It pinpoints issues that have surfaced over the course of the pandemic, such as increased job insecurity due to the threat of job loss, decline in mental wellbeing, erosion of recent gains in gender equality, fall in trust vis-à-vis institutions, deterioration of work–life balance and growth of vaccine hesitancy. The results of the survey highlight the need for a holistic approach to support all the groups hit hard by the crisis, to prevent them from falling further behind.

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Discover the new issue of the Progressive Post!

Social rights for platform workers, fiscal-rules reform and EU enlargement, as well as the challenges and opportunities for social democrats in the post-pandemic context, are the main topics of the latest Progressive Post magazine.

After more than a year of the pandemic, we are in a crucial political moment: policy decisions made now will drive reforms and sustainable growth in the years to come. For progressives to take ownership of these topics, this issue of the Progressive Post analyses some of these opportunities.

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Global Wage Report 2020/21: wages and minimum wages in the time of Covid-19

The ILO’s Global Wage Report is a key reference on wages and wage inequality for the academic community and policy-makers around the world. This seventh edition examines the evolution of real wages, giving a unique picture of wage trends globally and by region. The report includes evidence on how wages evolved in the first half of 2020 during the Covid-19 crisis: in the case of Europe, the report shows 1.2 per cent real wage growth during 2019, while the impact of Covid-19 would have reduced the total wage bill by 6.5 per cent by the second quarter of 2020.

The report reviews minimum-wage systems across the world and identifies the conditions under which minimum wages can reduce inequality and presents extensive data on levels of minimum wages, their effectiveness and the number and characteristics of workers paid at or below the minimum wage. It highlights how adequate minimum wages, statutory or negotiated, can play a key role in a human-centred recovery from the crisis.

‘The Global Wage Report is central to the analysis of wage trends and labour market developments as well as to the theoretical debate about the role of labour in the econom’—Hansjörg Herr, Berlin School of Economics and Law.

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WSI policy brief: the formula for a social Europe

The strengthening of the social dimension of the EU is back on the agenda of European politics. The European Pillar of Social Rights, the revision of the Posted Workers Directive and the initiative for a European minimum wage are interpreted by some as a turning point. However, the road to a more social Europe is still very long. Against that background, this paper formulates a social Europe thus: social minimum standards plus a reconfiguration of the internal market and economic and monetary union in a manner compatible with the pillars of the European social model.

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