etui.podcast

How can the European Union steer a course towards long-term social and ecological well-being in the context of incessant emergencies? Two decades of perpetual crisis management have greatly eroded Europe’s capacity to pursue a sustainable future, as considerations of short-term expediency continue to hamper the four necessary transitions – green, digital, geopolitical and socio-economic.

Find out more in Benchmarking Working Europe 2023

Until recently, the discussion of social welfare systems in Europe was disconnected from ecological concerns and policies. The relevant objectives, instruments and actors were largely different. Environmental and climate science, on the one hand, and the analysis and theoretical foundations of welfare systems, on the other, emerged and developed in disparate silos. While the welfare state was designed to reduce social risks and ensure (relative) stability of income and societies, it was also created as an institution that favours economic growth and the maintenance of income and consumption. Its aim was not to change behaviour but to maintain it, with a focus on redistribution. With environmental inequalities increasingly embedded in social ones, environmental policies are becoming social policies, and vice-versa.

Find out more in the recent Transfer Issue

Advanced capitalist societies seem to limp from one existential crisis to the next, becoming ever more fragile and unstable. Yet the dominant theoretical frameworks in political economy view capitalism as fundamentally stable or, at most, subject to incremental change. Baccaro, Blyth and Pontusson emphasise the diversity of capitalist trajectories or, rather, growth models. 

How should we think about modern capitalism? A growth models approach - Transfer article -  Lucio Baccaro, Mark Blyth, and Jonas Pontusson

The book: Diminishing Returns, The New Politics of Growth and Stagnation - Mark Blyth, Jonas Pontusson, and Lucio Baccaro

One should be careful using the word ‘historic’. But in the case of the directive on adequate minimum wages in the European Union it might actually be appropriate.

Minimum wage directive boost to struggling workers

Energy now costs month’s wages for low paid

EU confirms prices not wages driving inflation

The European minimum wage on the doorstep - Torsten Müller & Thorsten Schulten

Minimum-wages directive—history in the making - Torsten Müller & Thorsten Schulten

Even in Continental Europe, trade unions are the most powerful voice defending outsiders in welfare state politics, and reducing their institutional power in unemployment insurance and elsewhere will likely make things worse for outsiders and not – as certain political leaders in these countries often imply – make things better.

In this episode, you will be hearing a conversation between Hamid Ekbia and Nicola Countouris on AI, the concept of Heteromation and how artificial intelligence is impacting and will impact our (working) lives. 

This episode is part of the Reconstruction Beyond the Pandemic Project.

What are psychosocial risks? PSRs are increasingly impacting all industries in every Member State. The effects of psychosocial risks can be long-lasting and have both physical and psychological impacts on workers’ lives (such as depression, musculoskeletal disorders or burnout).

Find out more: https://www.etui.org/publications/psychosocial-risks-europe

https://www.etui.org/sites/default/files/2021-12/01-ETU%20BM2021-Chap5-Occupational%20health%20and%20safety%20inequalities%20in%20the%20EU_1.pdf

This episode with David Natali (Professor of Comparative and EU politics at the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies) addresses some of the key questions stemming from the pandemic. The magnitude of the crisis, in terms of both its impact on health and well-being, and its consequences on economic prospects, is enormous. The massive spread of the virus, higher mortality rates, lockdowns and the huge decline in economic activity in 2020 all seemed to bode ill for our future.

Find out more in Transfer's latest issue on Covid-19. 

What type of European social citizenship does the public across the European Union (EU) prefer on the national- and EU-levels? This episode looks into the development of public opinion towards European social citizenship from 1985 to the present from a birds-eye perspective.

Further readings: 

35 years of public opinion surveys and European social citizenship: What can we conclude?

Measuring social citizenship in social policy outputs, resources and outcomes across EU member states from 1985 to the present

Welfare chauvinism across benefits and services

The pandemic seems to have accelerated the expansion of all kinds of platform work and at the same time, platform work is being increasingly associated with difficult working conditions, health and safety risks, and inadequate levels of income for those that rely on it as a source of living. This podcast episode will shed light on some of the key insights from the second wave of the Internet and Platform work survey conducted in fourteen EU countries in Spring 2021. 

The platform economy in Europe, Results from the second ETUI Internet and Platform Work Survey (IPWS) - Agnieszka Piasna, Wouter Zwysen and Jan Drahokoupil