Social Agenda Issue 54

Flexibility and dignity: Due to digitalisation, there will be a demand for more flexibility: Whether or not people have to/wish to take up a short-term job, we must make sure they can work in dignity. © Belga Image SPECIAL FEATURE by Member States: They excluded people from its scope, most of the time those who need it most! This will change now that we have reached an agreement with Council and Parliament on transparent and predictable working conditions. The same applies to social protection for all? Yes. If you have many short contracts and different employment statuses – being unemployed, an employee, working for a firm, moving to another firm and then becoming a freelance – we must make sure that all these new kinds of jobs and the people that are doing those jobs, also have access to social security, in theory but also in practice! So we had to negotiate this with Member States. That is why we have proposed a Recommendation on this which was unanimously agreed by all Member States and which we will continue to follow up in the future: We want all the Member States to look at what they can do to ensure social security for these people too, because we will have more and more of them. If we don’t act now, we will see that, indeed, we have nicely organised social protection system but for less and less people! This is not the kind of society we want. The adoption of the Skills Agenda for Europe in 2016 was one of the highlights of your mandate. You also launched a yearly European Vocational Skills Week… The skills issue is strategic. People will not be afraid of the digital era if they are skilled. You need digitally skilled people to have companies that can flourish, pay good salaries and ensure real growth. It will not be simply about having the right skills, nor is it just about a particular digital profession: It is in fact a mind- set: It's about the way you learn. We have to make sure that people can be re-skilled and up-skilled and that we can create a culture of learning. I remember that when I finished my studies, I thought to myself: ‘Now it's done and over with!’. Whereas, in fact, we keep on learning every day! We have to, and let's be happy that we can do so! But this is a new culture. That is what the Skills Agenda is all about. It was not easy because education and vocational education and training (VET) takes place at grass root level in the Member States, through schools and educational institutions and with the social partners. We had to make the Skills Agenda for Europe happen on the ground. 1 8 / SOC I A L AG E NDA / MA R C H 2 0 1 9