Earlier this year, the European Council has approved the Strategic Agenda for 2024-2029, setting forth the EU's priorities for the coming five years. This key roadmap reflects the ambitions of EU leaders to build a robust and sovereign Europe that strengthens democracy, advances competitiveness, and bolsters defence and security.

Many social partners and non-governmental organizations have voiced serious concerns about the commitment to building a truly social Europe, arguing that current efforts fall short in tackling essential social challenges and fostering inclusivity and fairness across the EU. What’s missing is a focus on creating quality jobs as a central objective for this political term. This can be achieved by empowering workers to reclaim control over their work lives through collective bargaining, with the support of legislative action and strategic investments that expand their opportunities for success.

In our sixth issue of the Technology, Employment, and Wellbeing blog, we would like to focus on the key areas within the social agenda, such as a better access to collective bargaining across the labour market, importance of care, fundamental rights’ principles for regulating digital systems at work as well as ways of increasing worker’s wellbeing.

In this first article, Stan De Spiegelaere calls for the long-needed restoration of collective bargaining in Europe and the revision of the Public Procurement Directive in order to eliminate social dumping in public procurement services.

In the second article, by focusing on the experiences of platform workers in Denmark and the Netherland, Matteo Marenco, emphasises that it is crucial that collective bargaining increasingly reaches solo self-employed with less impediments linked to competition law.

In the third article, Elena Zacharenko takes a more critical stance arguing that despite promises made during the Covid-19 pandemic, the EU’s policies on care are unlikely to improve the labour conditions within the care sector, increasing the bloc’s reliance on the work of precarious ad underpaid migrant workers.

The last two articles address digital systems at work. On the one hand, there is a clear need to address the right of the workers in new digitalised work environments. Christina J. Colclough proposes three principles to ensure workers’ fundamental rights, preventing the commodification of work and workers and addressing information asymmetries which are disempowering workers. On the other hand, Robert Peters suggests that data-based technologies can empower workers, but companies should adopt a more proactive approach in promoting job-crafting practices to boost employee well-being.