The current proposal from the European Commission to revise the Posting of Workers Directive will not establish ‘equal pay for equal work in the same place’ nor effectively combat social dumping, and it needs to be significantly strengthened in order to have any impact.

The European Commission adopted a proposal for a Directive amending the 1996 ‘Directive on the posting of workers in the framework of the provision of services’ (Posted Workers Directive) on 8 March 2016. This ‘targeted revision’ of the PWD was announced as part of the Labour Mobility Package in the Commission’s Work Programme for 2016. The other two items in the Labour Mobility Package are a Communication on labour mobility and the revision of the Regulation on social security coordination – and the latter has now been postponed until after the British referendum on EU membership scheduled for 23 June 2016.

The Commission proposal for a Directive amending the PWD was referred to the European Parliament’s Employment and Social Affairs Committee. Since then, the ’yellow card’ procedure has been invoked by certain Member States against the revision of the PWD.

The stated goal of the 1996 PWD, which came into force in 1999, was to combat social dumping and prevent distortions of competition in the context of expanded European integration and increased posting of workers. Its central principle was that the pay and working conditions in effect in a Member State should be applicable both to local and posted workers.

The limitations of the original PWD, together with a very narrow interpretation of the rights it conferred by the European Court of Justice (ECJ), combined to make sure that the PWD only provided posted workers with a legal right to the basic minimum rights and conditions, and was largely ineffectual as a measure to combat social dumping.

Campaigns, in particular by the ETUC, for a revision of the PWD in light of the ECJ rulings were long ignored by the Commission, which eventually proposed an Enforcement Directive containing only marginal improvements to reduce abuse of posted workers in 2014. The deadline for the transposition of the Enforcement Directive by Member States is 18 June 2016.

A push in 2014 by several Member States for a revision of the PWD to establish the principle of ‘equal pay for equal work in the same place’ led to the current Commission proposal for a Directive amending the PWD.

Yellow card procedure invoked

By 10 May 2016 – the deadline for the ‘subsidiarity’ check by Member State parliaments on the Commission’s legislative proposal to amend the PWD – enough Member States had objected to the proposal on the grounds of subsidiarity for the ‘yellow card’ procedure to be invoked.

Under the yellow card system introduced as a protocol to the Lisbon Treaty, each Member State parliament can review draft EU legislation within eight weeks of receiving a proposal and produce a “reasoned opinion” objecting to the draft legislative act if it is believed the proposal breaches the principle of subsidiarity.

One-third of the total votes (at least 19 out of the total 56) is the threshold required to invoke the yellow card. In this case 11 Member States cast 22 votes for a review of the proposal. These were: Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia. Five of these states also claimed the proposal was in breach of the principle of proportionality. Their submissions can be read here.

The Commission as the author of the draft legislation is now required to review the proposal, after which it may proceed to maintain, amend or withdraw the draft, and it must provide reasons for its decision. The EP’s rules of procedure mean it cannot move forward with the proposal until the author has stated “how it intends to proceed”. There is no time limit on the review.

Posted workers and social dumping

A ‘posted’ worker is one sent by his/her employer to work for that employer on a temporary basis in an undertaking the employer has established in another Member State.  The Commission claims that these are citizens “providing a service” in another Member State, and that they do not integrate into the labour market of the host state. A posted worker is paid by the company they were recruited by in their home state, and their social security contributions continue to be paid to their home state.

According to the Commission’s 2014 figures, there are more than 1.9 million posted workers in the EU, up by 10% from 2013 and up by 44% since 2010. Germany, France and Belgium were the top three destination states, receiving more than half of all posted workers, with EU-15 Member States the destination for 86% of all posted workers.

Poland, Germany and France are the top three states posting workers to other Member States. Construction accounts for more than 40% of all postings. There are three cross-border situations that the PWD covers: subcontracting, intra-corporate transfers and posting of temporary agency workers.

There is not an agreed definition of social dumping in the EU institutions but Eurofound (2012) defines it as “a practice involving the export of goods from a country with weak or poorly enforced labour standards, where the exporter’s costs are artificially lower than its competitors in countries with higher standards, hence representing an unfair advantage in international trade”. An alternative definition from the ETUI (2014) defines it as “the practice, undertaken by self-interested market participants, of undermining or evading existing social regulations with the aim of gaining a short-term advantage over their competitors”.

The tendency is for companies to use posted workers for labour-intensive jobs in low value chains, particularly in construction and transport, and for the company to pay only the minimum rate of pay legally required in the host Member State (or to illegally avoid observance of the host state’s labour laws and standards). As well as wage dumping, companies reduce other working conditions to make savings and require employees to pay high charges, for example for housing.

Concerns over the use of posted workers for social dumping within the European market became a political issue in the late 1980s and early 1990s as cross-border service provision expanded following the incorporation of Greece, Spain and Portugal. The first major ruling issued by the ECJ on the rights of posted workers versus the right to provide services was Rush Portuguesa, in which a Portuguese company posted workers to France under Portuguese pay and conditions, and was challenged by the French government for doing so without its authorisation.

The court ruled that the Company had the right to post its own workers to France under the ‘freedom to provide services’ contained in the Treaty of Rome, but also that France had the right to enforce the application of French labour laws.

Posted Workers Directive

The 1996 Directive was introduced as a result of the public debate and concerns of trade unions and some Member States regarding unfair competition on wages and working conditions arising from the posting of workers. It established a set of regulations aimed at ensuring minimum protection in destination Member States. Specifically, it guarantees the application of the host Member State’s statutory and regulatory provisions relating to:

*maximum work periods and minimum rest periods;
*minimum paid annual holidays;
*the minimum rates of pay, including overtime rates (excluding supplementary occupational retirement pension schemes);
*the conditions of hiring-out of workers, in particular the supply of workers by temporary employment undertakings;
*health, safety and hygiene at work;
*protective measures with regard to the terms and conditions of employment of pregnant women or women who have recently given birth, of children and of young people; and
*equality of treatment between men and women and other provisions on non-discrimination.

There are exceptions to the right to these minimum provisions for postings lasting less than a month, for the crew of merchant ships, for staff involved in the initial assembly, and where the amount of work to be done is “not significant”. The “temporary” nature of the posting was not defined by a time limit in the Directive.

In the construction sector “collective agreements or arbitration awards which have been declared universally applicable” must also be applied.

Interpretation of PWD as a maximum directive

While the 1990 Rush Portuguesa ruling suggested EEC members could actually extend all employment laws and regulations to posted workers, the ‘minimum’ rights outlined in the PWD and subsequent rulings by the ECJ in the 2000s enabled companies to exploit “the difference between minimum and standard levels of protection”.

The court has held that host Member States cannot require posting employers to comply with standards that go beyond the terms of the PWD – ie, posting employers cannot be required to pay wages at rates higher than the legal minimum, and cannot be required to adhere to standards not included in the minimum list of provisions above. It has also held that the right of workers and union to take collective action, including the right to strike, is subject to the right to freedom to provide services and freedom of establishment.

Some of the most significant cases include:

Laval: In 2004, Latvian firm Laval posted Latvian construction workers to Sweden and refused to acknowledge the existing collective agreement with the Swedish Building Workers’ Union. As Sweden had a well-functioning collective bargaining and agreement system and did not have an across-the-board minimum wage bound in law, Laval claimed that it was not obliged to pay the rates collectively agreed in the building sector.

The Swedish building union took collective industrial action. Laval claimed to the ECJ that it was being discriminated against on the grounds of nationality and that the Swedish union was infringing upon its right to provide services.

The court found that companies or “service providers” from another EU state are obliged to abide by the host agreement but collective action must be “proportional”. This means that the ECJ believes workers do have the right to take industrial action – but only when the minimum wage or conditions of the host country, or the minimum working conditions set out in the Posting of Workers Directive are being breached by the employer. The Laval case is viewed as the moment the PWD switched from being viewed as a minimum to a maximum directive.

Viking: In order to cut costs, the Finnish shipping company Viking Line attempted to re-flag its ships as Estonian and operate out of Estonia. When two Finnish maritime unions organised a blockade of Viking Line, Viking took its case to the ECJ: again, the claim was that the company’s right to freedom of movement was being restricted by the industrial action of the workers. In December 2007, while the court found that collective action to protect posted workers from exploitation was legal, the unions had restricted Viking Line’s right of establishment.

Rüffert: German company Objekt und Bauregie employed a Polish sub-contractor to employ Polish building workers, posted to Germany, on less than half the minimum wage agreed by German trade unions and employer associations. In 2008, the ECJ ruled that O&B should not be bound by the local Lower Saxony law that states public building contractors must abide by the existing collective agreements.

The court found that while member states may impose minimum pay rates on foreign companies posting workers in their state, the local law restricted the “freedom to provide services” and was not justified by the aim of protecting the workers because workers in the private sector were not covered by such protections.

In essence, this ruling prevents above-minimum wages and conditions being included in public tender contracts, conflicting with ILO Convention 94, which takes the approach that  public procurement contracts should not be used to exert downward pressure on wages or conditions.

Luxembourg: The European Commission took Luxembourg to the ECJ claiming that by imposing its labour law provisions – especially the mandatory indexation of wages – on all workers, including posted workers, the Luxembourg government was going beyond what was allowed under the PWD. The Luxembourg government argued that the application of these laws to posted workers was in the interests of ‘public policy’.

The court held that for public policy reasons to justify enforcing above-minimum standards, such standards must be “crucial for the protection of the political, social or economic order (in such a way) as to require compliance by all persons present on the national territory, regardless of their nationality”.

However, in February 2015 the ETUC welcomed the ruling in Sähköalojen ammattiliitto ry, which diverged from Laval and found that a host Member State can require posting companies to pay holiday allowances, daily flat-rate allowances to compensate workers for posting, and compensation for travelling time, on equal terms as local workers; and that if binding collective agreements set different pay levels for different groups of employees, these should be considered as being in line with the PWD.

Impact of ECJ’s PWD case law on right to take collective action

Overall the case law (with the exception of the more recent Sähköalojen ruling) highlights the following problems with the PWD in relation to collective action:

The right to take collective industrial action, including the right to strike, is not in fact guaranteed in the EU as it is subject to “Community law and national laws and practices”, which means it can be restricted.

The right to take collective action to prevent the exploitation of posted workers by foreign service providers is subject to the company’s right to freedom of movement and establishment under the EU Services Directive – a right which the ECJ has repeatedly and consistently upheld as being superior to workers’ rights. The Court now says that the freedom of establishment “may be relied on by a private undertaking against a trade union or an association of trade unions”. This means employers can take unions to court for any collective action by arguing it is violating their economic freedoms.

The collective action of workers and unions taken against posting companies is only deemed legitimate if it is “proportional” – that is, in defence of the most basic minimum conditions agreed on by EU bodies or set in law by the host country. The higher-than-average conditions that may be included in public sector agreements are an infringement of the right to establishment.

Enforcement Directive 2014

In response to calls for a revision of the PWD in light of the ECJ jurisprudence, the Commission claimed up until 2014 that such a revision was not necessary due to the introduction of Better Law-Making and REFIT, and that an Enforcement Directive on the PWD would resolve outstanding issues. The deadline for transposition of the Enforcement Directive is 18 June 2016.

The Enforcement Directive:

*lists criteria characterising the existence of a genuine link between the employer and the Member State of establishment (to combat ‘letterbox companies’)
*defines Member States’ responsibilities to verify compliance with the rules on posting of workers
*lists national control measures that the Member States may apply when monitoring compliance with the working conditions applicable to posted workers
*sets requirements for posting companies to facilitate transparency of information and inspections
*empowers trade unions and other parties to lodge complaints and take legal and/or administrative action against the employers of posted workers, if their rights are not respected
*ensures the application of administrative penalties and fines across the Member States if the requirements of EU law on posting are not respected.

The Enforcement Directive partially addresses a key problem with the application of the PWD in relation to subcontractors by introducing joint liability on the main contractor. This will set out who can be held liable for payment of wages, but does not determine what the wage of posted workers within a subcontracting chain should be.

The fundamental problems with the design of the PWD and its interpretation by the ECJ that have been outlined above were not addressed in the Enforcement Directive, which limited its scope to addressing fraud, circumvention of rules, and exchange of information between the Member States.

Commission’s new proposal has many limitations

In 2014, a group of Member States led by France campaigned for a revision of the PWD. Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Sweden  signed a joint letter to the Commission calling for such a revision in order to establish in EU law the principle of ‘equal pay for equal work in the same place’, a demand supported by the ETUC and most European trade union federations. In response to this pressure, the Commission brought forward its proposal for a targeted revision of the 1996 Directive in March.

In doing so, the Commission finally admitted the existence of social dumping in the EU and its relationship with the PWD. In its Impact Assessment on the new proposal for a Directive amending the PWD, the Commission admits: “The 1996 Posting of Workers Directive establishes a structural differentiation of wage rules applying to posted and local workers which is the institutional source of an un-level playing field between posting and local companies, as well as of segmentation in the labour market,” and states that “the existing Directive has an in-built structural wage gap between posted and local workers”.

The key aspects of its proposal are:

*The ‘limited time’ a posted worker counts as a posted worker is defined as being 24 months or less, after which s/he will be covered by the labour law of the host state.
*The same rules on remuneration will apply to local and posted workers – but only if these are set by law or by universally applicable collective agreements.
*The rules set by universally applicable collective agreements become mandatory for posted workers in all economic sectors.
*Within sub-contracting chains, Member States will have the option to apply to posted workers the same rules on remuneration that are binding on the main contractor and even if these rules result from collective agreements that are not universally applicable.
*The principle of equal treatment with local temporary agency workers will also be applied to posted temporary agency workers, aligning the current legislation on domestic temporary agency work.

The key limitation of the Commission’s proposed revision is that it will not establish equal pay for equal work in the same place. The ‘same rules’ on remuneration will apply only when the standard is enshrined in law or in a universally applicable collective agreement, which is some Member States excludes the vast majority of collective agreements.

The two-year period before assimilation into the local labour market means most posted workers will be excluded as 90 per cent of posted workers are posted for less than 24 months at an average of 4 months.

It does not address the conflict between the right to take collective action and the right to freedom to provide services.

It also does not address the tension on the role of public procurement contracts between the Rüffert  case, the Public Procurement Directive  and ILO Convention  94, which states that conditions  under  public procurement contracts should not be less favourable than those established  for  the  same  work  in  the  same  area  by  collective agreement  or  similar  instrument.

The proposal does not make the general contractor liability at all stages of the subcontracting chain binding, and it does not require adequate proof of a pre-existing labour relationship before posting providing a service of similar nature.

All of these issues should be addressed through the process of revising the PWD in order to ensure it actually finally becomes an effective instrument to combat social dumping.