The Council of the European Union has struck an agreement in principle over a proposed directive on “transparent and predictable working conditions”, which aims first and foremost to lay the ground for minimum protection of workers in new forms of employment (see article n° 10507). With its “general approach”, the Council signals that it wants to secure the adoption of the text by the end of its term, so negotiations with the Parliament can begin, even though the proposal was submitted just seven months ago. Exchanges between ministers indicated that there is unanimous support of the objectives of the draft directive, however an agreement was made easier by the fact that, under the compromise reached, member states would be able to set the scope of its application and decide which workers would benefit from such protection.
The draft directive is called the ‘Written Statement Directive’, as it details the obligations to inform workers of the essential aspects of their employment relationship, revises a directive that dates back to 1991 (91/533) in a bid to take into account new “non-standard” forms of employment, such as zero-hour contracts, on demand and intermittent work. Such forms of labour deny workers a clear idea of key aspects of their working conditions: their working hours, timetable and pay.
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