Reconciliation of Work and Family Life and Collective Bargaining in the European Union

By Stavroula Demetriades, Marie Meixner, Adam Barry

Initiatives promoting reconciliation of work and family life have become popular across Europe as part of employment policies as well as social policies dealing, among other things, with the challenges of competitiveness, the renewed Lisbon targets for increased participation in the labour market, and an ageing population.

This working paper is based on national reports and an analysis of EIRO articles on the subject. It examines the current position in the 25 EU Member States, Norway and the two acceding countries, Bulgaria and Romania, in terms of legislation and collective bargaining on the issue of the reconciliation of family and work life. It also looks at the positions of the social partners and reviews recent developments at EU level.

Reconciliation of work and family life today involves the relationship between different activities - certainly paid work and unpaid caring, but also other activities such as social life, personal development and civic participation. It thus involves the relationship between a wide range of stakeholder groups, including families, employers, governments (EU, national, local level), services, carers, the cared-for, and the wider society (Reconciliation of work and family life, DG Employment, 1997). Due to demographic changes, changes in the composition of the labour force, technological development and new forms of work organisation, the restructuring of social protection, and changes in family structure and in the distribution of caring work between women and men, the issue is central to the above stakeholder groups.

In recent years, the emphasis put by the European Union on policies devised to support equal opportunities for women and men and new forms of work organisation has given a major impetus to the introduction of measures associated with the reconciliation of work and family life. In this sense, the provisions included in the EU Employment Guidelines, which coordinate Member States' National Action Plans for employment, and the European directives, which are transposed to national legislation systems, have supported a change in the prevailing attitudes of governments and social partners, and have resulted in the development of new measures promoting reconciliation of work and family life. Labour market policies and policy for families are closely related to each other.

(European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, 2006)