The first event of the new series* took place on 3-4 December in Sesimbra, Portugal, and focused on the reality of the twin green and digital transformation in Europe’s Southern region (notably on Portugal, Spain, France and Italy). 25 trade union representatives exchanged with experts and policymakers on how to overcome the obstacles to a Just Transition and a fair digitalisation through collective bargaining and negotiated solutions. 

Delay of the green transition 

In only four years, the discourse around the green transition changed dramatically with enormous implications for industrial sectors and their workers. In 2021, the optimism around the Green Deal and the win-win potential of decarbonisation dominated both, the political agenda and corporate strategies, with many companies announcing ambitious decarbonization goals. However, today we see a massive scale back, as companies are stalling investments in decarbonisation, while pressuring policymakers to roll back on legislation. With most of Europe’s industrial sectors reporting to be on the brink of survival, workers are the ones bearing the brunt with almost daily restructuring announcements and rising cost-of-living. 

Zooming on the reality of some key sectors in the Southern region, the prospects are quite bleak. In the automotive sector, while the share of electric vehicle manufacturing is increasing, it is by far not enough to match the production of combustion engine vehicles. In clean tech , even though Italy and France specialized on heat pumps, China continues to concentrate the manufacturing of green technologies, while Europe is mainly importing, installing and maintaining them. Meanwhile, oil and gas companies are drastically reducing or even abandoning their green investments. 

On the positive side, participants were joined by MEP Jana Toom, whose report calling for a Just Transition Directive had just been approved by the Europea Parliament’s Employment Committee. This was a core demand of industriAll Europe’s 2022 Just Transition Manifesto, which was developed after the first series of roundtables in 2021. 

IndustriAll Europe’s Deputy General Secretary, Isabelle Barthes, said: “The discourse around decarbonisation has changed, nevertheless workers’ and their unions’ demands for a stronger legal framework on anticipation and management of change, rights to training and strengthened worker participation, are stronger than ever. If anything, this change highlights the importance of strong measures to protect workers. We hope that the European Commission will follow through with a proposal.” 

Timid digitalisation, with incipient AI deployment 

Meanwhile, the digital transformation has come more into the focus, following the unexpected rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and competition from both US and China. While AI is dominating the press headlines, the deployment and use of AI in industry will take more time, as European companies are slower than their global counterparts.

In Europe’s Southern region, not much has changed compared to 2021. Automation in manufacturing has not seen major advances. For example, in France, where the use of industrial robots has increased the most, we only see a timid rise of 4% from 21.5% to 25.1%. AI is still not deployed in most companies, as only around 7% of them use AI in France, Italy and Spain, and 5.6% in Portugal. 

Trade unions are trying to tackle digitalisation through social dialogue and collective bargaining, with many agreements addressing telework. AI is also increasingly addressed, like in Italy, where a collective agreement in the chemical sector addresses health and safety risks, requires companies to assess potential risks before new technologies are introduced and provides training rights for digital skills. Meanwhile, in Spain, a tripartite agreement sets the framework for negotiation of how digitalisation will be implemented across different sectors. 

However, with the recent European Commission Digital Omnibus proposal, trade unions fear that workers’ rights will be severely limited. “Our key demand to the Commission is to not break the dynamic created by the General Data Protection Directive and the AI Act for workers’ protection,” said Isabelle Barthes. “The proposed simplification of these two pieces of legislation, includes worrying deregulation of workers rights to information, training and data privacy. Workers need more protection, not less, and, therefore, we need to safeguard existing rights, while going a step further on algorithmic management where a legal framework is missing.”

*This is part of industriAll Europe’s new 2-years-long EU-funded project that aims to strengthen collective bargaining and social dialogue, in particular by using the opportunities from the European Directive on Adequate Minimum Wages. This is the first event of a series of 3 regional workshops that will be followed by a final conference.