ETUC: Mistake to scrap jobs commissioner amid jobs crisis

The European Commission has announced plans to downgrade the importance of its Jobs and Social Rights portfolio — less than 24 hours after workers marched to the European institutions to demand action to protect jobs.

Every European Commission since the 1970s has included a Commissioner for Employment and Social Affairs (or Jobs and Social Rights as it has been called since 2019).

But the post would be eliminated in the plans for the new Commission published today, instead being made part of a ‘People, Skills and Preparedness’ portfolio.

The announcement comes after thousands of workers rallied in Brussels’ Place du Luxembourg yesterday in response to a growing crisis in European industry that has already cost 850,000 workers their livelihoods and now threatens tens of thousands more quality jobs in Belgium, France, Germany and Italy.

Esther Lynch, General Secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation, said:

“I am calling on Ursula von der Leyen to urgently reinstate the Commission portfolio for Quality Jobs and Social Rights. 

“Scrapping the Commissioner for Jobs and Social Rights less than 24 hours after thousands marched in Brussels to demand action to protect their jobs and rights sends entirely the wrong message to working people about the priorities of the new Commission.

“What ordinary working people have seen this week is Europe’s leaders distracted by political game playing over the Commission’s ‘top jobs’ when they should be focused on saving their quality jobs from the growing crisis in our industries.  

“Today’s proposal is full of portfolios which unfortunately sound like they’ve been drawn up on a corporate away-day rather than in response to the priorities of working people.

“This Commission, which is imbalanced when it comes to gender as well as political priorities, has undoubtedly started on the wrong foot with working people and now has a lot of work to do to gain their trust.

“Faced with the rising threat of the far right, it’s incumbent on democrats to show citizens that they are hearing and responding to their priorities through a project of hope that puts workers at the heart of the European project.”