13th ETUC Congress - Speech by Martin Schulz, President of the European Parliament

Monsieur le Président de la République Française, cher François,

Monsieur le Président de la Commission européenne, cher Jean-Claude,

Madame le Maire, chère Anne

Monsieur le Secrétaire général, cher Jean-Claude,

Mesdames et Messieurs,

Comrades,

I am very pleased to be with you here today at the 13th European Trade Union Confederation Congress in Paris. Thank you very much for inviting me to speak.

You will now be expecting from me the sort of speech that is indeed expected from the president of a parliament. You are now expecting me to set out what the European Parliament has been doing to combat youth unemployment - the fact that we have set up a Youth Guarantee, that we have secured more and more timely funding for it, that we have consistently opposed austerity policy axe-wielding and at long last, through the Investment Plan, are going for growth, and that we are fighting to involve the social partners in the economic policy coordination process, including, in particular, in labour market reforms. All of those things are true, certainly, but today I won't be talking about any of them. So if that's what you've come here to hear me talk about, you might as well leave now.

Today I propose doing something that invited guests don't normally do. I will be demanding things from you - my hosts, and the trade union movement - and giving you challenges.

We are all familiar with the figures - some previous speakers have already mentioned them - figures which are appalling: in Europe today, five million young people are unemployed; 23 million individuals are jobless; one in five Europeans is living in poverty or is at risk of poverty in. The gap between rich and poor is widening. The neoliberal high priests of deregulation - with complete indifference to the economic woes brought about by deregulated financial markets - continue to preach at us that it is our European social model that is the problem, since, according to them, our European social model puts us at a competitive disadvantage, and that there is, accordingly, only one remedy: cut pay, raise retirement ages, get rid of safeguards against dismissal, and lower standards of protection.

And yet it is our European social model that makes us attractive to do business with!

For decades, the secret to Europe's success story was the fact that working hard and doing a proper job would pay off. My parents would have two things to say to their children all the time; in my youth there came a point when I could not stand hearing them. One was: 'We want you to have a better life than we have had.' And that is what we have clearly had. People of my generation have lived a life that their parents would not have thought possible. The second piece of advice was: 'Knuckle down to work, and then you'll get somewhere.' And that was true too: if you learned a trade or went to university, you had every chance of getting a job with decent pay; you had enough money to start a family, go on holiday and buy a flat. That was the European deal: making an effort paid off; proper pay for a proper job. The problem is this: that European deal has gone.

Plenty of parents are worried that their children - despite knuckling down - will be worse off than they are. Some young people I encounter have two degrees and can speak a number of languages, but can't find a job. And if they do find a job, they end up in a spiral of unpaid internships and temporary contracts. In those circumstances, you don't start a family or buy a flat. In those circumstances, you keep living with your parents.

Five million jobless young people - that's a huge number of individual tragedies. That is something we must never lose sight of: while numbers have no names and are abstract concepts, there are real people behind them, living real lives. Five million jobless young people - the cruel truth of the matter is that our children are paying with their life chances for a crisis that is not of their making.

Five million jobless young people - that is also a tragedy for the whole of society. Because of youth unemployment, the social fabric of our society is fraying; it is undermining confidence in the fairness of our society. For a democracy, that is potentially deadly.

That's why we must finally go back to the European deal - that working hard and doing a proper job will pay off.

On all the issues here - combating joblessness among the young and precarious employment, opportunities for training and education, fair pay and, after a hard working life, a living pension - essentially the question concerning proper jobs is: what sort of society do we want to live in?

Anyone who has been unemployed at some point, or who has struggled to make a living, or who has started a new job or a training course - the memory of the day when I started training to become a bookseller is still fresh in my mind - I was so proud that I was now an apprentice - anyone who has been in those circumstances knows that labour, at all times, is centred on the dignity of the individual.

The labour movement and the trade union movement have secured acceptance, in the world of work, for the fundamental value on which Europe is founded: the dignity of the individual.

Now, the challenge for the labour movement, the trade union movement, is, again, to champion the dignity of the individual, given that the way we run our economies, the way we work, our values, our culture, the way we think, and society in its entirety are being subjected to radical change. The digital revolution is profoundly transforming society on a scale unlikely to have been matched since the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century.

At virtually all times, virtually everywhere, we can retrieve information and communicate with others. Already, algorithms lead us to expect optimised dating and mating; they set vast financial transactions in motion that can rock entire economies; and they calculate how creditworthy we are. Before long, our fridges will stock themselves and driverless cars will be on the roads; and soon, perhaps, our health status data will be monitored too.

The digitisation of the world affords undreamt-of opportunities: more transparency and greater participation, better access to knowledge and information, more effective medical treatments, and better services. Use must be made of those innovations if they can improve people's lives.

But digitisation also harbours considerable risks and dangers: global concerns' monopolising pretensions and mass surveillance by intelligence agencies. At long last, there is a fundamental debate in Europe on those issues. What is not yet being sufficiently talked about is the impact of digitisation on the way we work. In the first instance, a few tough questions need to be asked. Do we really have more freedom if, via smartphones, we are permanently contactable and in a position to work, i.e. if working hours become completely limitless? How can we safeguard our right to informational self-determination when data are now being exploited for commercial purposes, and how can we protect copyright and ensure that people are paid fairly for their work? These are not nerd debates for technofreaks; rather, they belong at the heart of society and also, therefore, at the heart of the trade union movement.

And precisely because this process involves more than 'just' technical progress which might be regarded as depoliticised. 'Disruptive innovation' is the term used to describe the ongoing total transformation of established value chains. Production processes, work structures, marketing and customer behaviours are being revolutionised at breakneck speed. A good many people are predicting millions of job losses because of the digital revolution; others are forecasting that millions of jobs will be created. Whether digitisation becomes a job creator or a job killer, and whether the new jobs created are good jobs with fair pay, depends crucially - to my mind - on how we manage the digital revolution.

What is certain is that data capitalism is nearly with us. And for data capitalism we need new rules - rules which safeguard privacy, for example through a charter of digital fundamental rights, rules which ensure that people are paid fairly for their work, and that applies equally to people who work in the arts, people who translated and people who drive taxis. A term has been coined in French, 'uberisation', meaning 'adoption d’un modèle de commerce consistant à mettre des ressources à disposition des clients depuis leurs smartphones, à tout moment et sans délai'. That sounds progressive, at first hearing, and - above all - convenient; and convenience is what often lures us into data harvesters' traps.

The pioneering thinker Jaron Lanier has given us an urgent warning: 'Whenever someone introduces a cloud service to make some aspect of life easier, like access to music, rides, dates, loans, or anything else, it also now expected that innocent people will suffer, even if that is not strictly, technically necessary. People will be cut off from social protections. If artists enjoyed copyright, that will be lost in the new system. If workers were in a union, they will no longer be. If drivers had special licenses and contracts, they no longer will.' Jaron Lanier also says: 'But people can’t stay young forever. Sometimes people get sick, or need to care for children, partners, or parents. We can’t “sing for our supper” for every meal.'

Not only do we risk getting a society in which hard work no longer pays, because work is no longer fairly paid (but others do become very rich in the process); we are also told that this new type of social dumping is 'cool' and 'cosy', because everything is 'shared'. But do we want to live in a society in which profit goes only to a few, while entrepreneurial risk is 'outsourced' for workers to bear? In the US, one in three workers is already self-employed. In many instances, however, such more flexible arrangements go hand in hand with a precarious livelihood. Where there is worker fragmentation, of course, organised representation of interests is made extraordinarily difficult.

For that reason, what the labour movement succeeded in doing in the 19th century with the Industrial Revolution must now be achieved again. Initially, the Industrial Revolution impoverished workers. It was tamed by the labour movement and trade unions; they managed to turn technical progress into social progress, social justice and prosperity for the masses. Labour leaders at the time realised that parliaments and legislation are the best weapon with which to fight for and win rights, and defend them. In those days, rights were fought for and won in a national context; these days, those rights have to be championed in a European context and brought into line with the realities of digital capitalism. Sometimes, when I speak with trade unionists, they say: 'The EU? It's neoliberal anyway - just an open door for deregulators.' True: in the past, EU policy has often been neoliberal. But not because the EU is inherently neoliberal; rather, it's because the trade union movement has too often left European policymaking to the deregulators! If you want to change policies you must change the political majorities!

Bernadette Ségol has grasped that and has got involved in European policymaking. Before every European summit, we have met and coordinated our positions. Accordingly, I would like to warmly thank her again here, at what is her last ETUC congress as General Secretary, for the constructive cooperation between us. Bernadette Ségol, we shall miss you in Brussels. I hope that whoever you elect as her successor today will provide the trade unions' input into European policymaking with as much determination and reason as Bernadette Ségol has done.

So that, together, we can fight to ensure that - in the digital era - there is fair pay for a proper job. By finally putting an end to the steamrollering of social rights by economic freedoms in the internal market, the weapon to achieve that being legislation: for instance, social dumping can be effectively combated by revising the Posting of Workers Directive; and we are working on that. By combining potential and resources - in the Juncker plan, for example - and investing in Europe's digital infrastructure. By, in addition, establishing legal certainty across borders and a digital internal market. By safeguarding intellectual property and labour's worth. By promoting a culture of business start-ups, but also by investing much more in education and training, since, in the digital age, ongoing expansion of knowledge and skills will be the key to maintaining competitiveness. By breaking up monopolies which make a social market economy an impossibility, and by guaranteeing data protection and security standards that are in keeping with our European values.

I want Europe to continue to be an area of innovation and creativity in the 21st century. I want new, innovative products to be developed in European laboratories and manufactured in European plants. And I want to ensure that hard-won workers' rights are not sacrificed at the digital altar of convenience. To my mind, that is labour and trade union movement's historic task in the 21st century. What the labour movement succeeded in doing in the 19th century - taming the Industrial Revolution - must also be achieved in the 21st century with the digital revolution.

For that reason - and this is the challenge I am giving you - the digital revolution is an issue that belongs not in narrowly defined working parties, but, rather, at the heart of trade union policymaking; and trade unions belong at the heart of European policymaking.

Thank you for your attention.