Thursday 18 June 2020, 15h-16h15 Brussels time

Job Quality in Personal Household Services: Towards Better Regulation

Personal Household Services (PHS) are provided within the household, mostly by women, mainly working part time, with relatively low skills and often from a migrant background. It is a rapidly growing sector where a large share of the work is done informally. PHS workers are often precarious workers with low wages, long working hours, lack of privacy and less or no social protection. They are also vulnerable to physical, verbal, or even sexual abuse by their employers. Characteristics like gender, race and citizenship status (many are illegal immigrants) exacerbate their vulnerability. This vulnerability has been underlined in the recent months because of the corona crisis when many PHS workers lost their jobs. The precariousness of PHS workers is to an important extent due to the limited visibility, monitoring and regulation of the sector. Improving this situation is high on the agenda of trade unions, certain governments, as well as of the EU and the ILO.

This joint ETUI-AIAS webinar will present the results of a comparative research project on PHS in ten EU countries - Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Spain, Germany, France, Finland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and the UK. It analyses the existing public policies and social partners' strategies towards personal and household services in these countries from a comparative and multidisciplinary perspective. It also discusses how legal regulation, public policy, and social partners’ actions should be adjusted to improve job quality and reduce informality in the PHS sector.

Speakers: Ana B. Muñoz (Carlos III Madrid), Francisco Javier Gómez Abelleira (Carlos III University), Minna van Gerven (University of Helsinki), Clémence Ledoux (University of Nantes), Aurélie Decker (European Federation for Services to Individuals, EFSI) and Mark Bergfeld (Director Property Services & UNICARE, UNI Global Union – UNI Europa)

Host: Mariya Nikolova, Communication Officer, ETUI

Register in advance for this webinar here. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.