Europe says it needs workers from abroad to fill labour shortages. Yet many remain trapped in precarious legal and working conditions, leaving them more vulnerable to exploitation. In an interview with EU Perspectives, Mercedes Miletti, Senior Adviser at the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), explains why better labour rules alone may not be enough.
The EU’s upcoming Quality Jobs Act and the Fair Labour Mobility Package aim to address issues including health and safety, collective bargaining, subcontracting and labour inspections. The European Commission proposal should include a review of the European Labour Authority’s (ELA) mandate to strengthen the protection of migrant workers’ rights and an announcement of possible measures regarding the posting of migrant workers.
According to Ms Miletti, they already showing some weakness in a “schizophrenic” European approach to migrant workers rights. She says better rules will not solve the problem if migrant workers remain trapped by insecure residence and work permits. “If labour migration policies do not change, we will continue to have a vicious circle of exploitation.”
What do you think about the EU approach to migrant workers?
I find the EU’s approach to migration quite contradictory, I have sometimes called it “schizophrenic”. On the one hand, the EU says that we need migrants because of labour shortages. On the other, migration is increasingly framed through a security lens and migrants are increasingly criminalised.
You cannot separate these two things. You cannot say that you need migrant workers while maintaining policies that leave many of those workers in precarious or irregular situations.
The EU is negotiating talent partnerships with countries such as Pakistan and Bangladesh, while also returning workers from those same countries.
We saw something similar with the EU Talent Pool. In an ideal world, matching an employer with a migrant job seeker can be useful. But if you don’t change the underlying rules on access to work permits and residence permits, you are essentially just matching two people and then telling the worker: Good luck getting a visa or residence permit.
At the same time, the EU is negotiating talent partnerships with countries such as Pakistan and Bangladesh, while also returning workers from those same countries. So there is a real contradiction between the different policy approaches. That is why, despite my concerns, I see the Quality Jobs Act and the Fair Labour Mobility Package as a possible window of opportunity.
How should the Quality Jobs Act address migrant workers’ rights?
To date, there is no particular focus on migrants, or specifically on labour migration or migrant workers in general. But I have always tried to bring these issues into the consultation and the work being done, including in our internal coordination.
This is something I see on the Commission side as well. For example, when talking about the European Pillar of Social Rights, migrants are not necessarily mentioned explicitly. We have tried to stress that these principles should cover all workers, irrespective of their immigration status, including migrant workers.
This is particularly relevant when we talk about quality jobs. There are some references to illegal employment and undeclared work, which mainly focus on certain high-risk sectors, but the connection with migrant workers is not always made explicit.
We have seen many cases of abuse and exploitation in the recruitment of migrant workers, particularly (…) where there is a vacuum in EU legislation.
Subcontracting and labour intermediation are now among the ETUC’s priorities. We have seen many cases of abuse and exploitation in the recruitment of migrant workers, particularly in the context of subcontracting and labour intermediaries and in certain sectors where there is a vacuum in EU legislation.
We are therefore calling for stronger joint liability and, ideally, direct employment. But we also need proper monitoring and licensing of recruitment agencies and agents — not only temporary work agencies, which are already covered by EU legislation, but also the intermediaries that currently fall into a regulatory gap. You see similar issues in Italy with gangmasters, particularly in the agricultural sector.
What role should Fair Labour Mobility play in protecting migrant workers?
So this is one area where we are trying to be more specific in our demands around the quality jobs proposal. When we talk about migrant workers and about protecting workers irrespective of their immigration status, there also needs to be a clear protection framework for people in an irregular situation.
We always try to highlight the importance of firewalls and other safeguards that allow people to report violations, abuse and exploitation without fear of retaliation, including detention or deportation. This is particularly important in the current context, with the implementation of the Return Regulation, where we see significant risks in this regard.
We are also trying to include provisions on health and safety. Quality jobs obviously have a whole dimension related to occupational health and safety, and there may be further EU action in this area. We therefore try to remind policymakers that there are sectors of the economy – domestic work, for example – where workers remain largely unprotected. Many of these workers are women and migrants, and many are in precarious or irregular situations.
What are your priorities for a better implementation of the proposal?
Our other priorities include the just transition and climate-related issues, the right to disconnect and telework, and secure contracts. On precarious and insecure contracts, I have also tried to bring in the perspective of migrant workers, including in relation to platform work.
Our organisation tends to focus on issues such as part-time work and young workers, and on insecure forms of employment more generally. But if I had to identify the main priority, I would say labour intermediation, which is of course closely linked to the Fair Labour Mobility Package.
So, that is perhaps the other point. Everything is, of course, still to be seen in the context of the Quality Jobs Act, but we are also really targeting the Fair Labour Mobility Package. As the ETUC, we have called for a revision of the ELA mandate, including an extension of its scope to cover third-country nationals.
Labour exploitation today is much broader than what we traditionally think. Of course, it still happens on construction sites or in agricultural fields, but it is also connected to recruitment, labour intermediation and, increasingly, the digital labour market.
There is an important link here between undeclared work, exploitation and abuse, labour inspections, and the need to strengthen the protection of workers’ rights. This is probably where we see more tangible opportunities for action, particularly when it comes to the posting of third-country nationals and the revision of the ELA mandate.
We are also hoping for some funding for trade union counselling structures, so that workers have access to information and legal support. We have been asking for permanent funding for these structures to ensure that this kind of support is available on a sustainable basis. I think the Quality Jobs Act, as it currently stands, will not, by itself, prevent labour exploitation or abuse. I have quite a lot of question marks about whether it will really have an impact on the ground.
Could it help prevent the exploitation of migrant workers?
The reason is that labour exploitation today is much broader than what we traditionally think of as exploitation. Of course, it still happens on construction sites or in agricultural fields, but it is also connected to recruitment, labour intermediation and, increasingly, the digital labour market.
I think Europe is actually quite late in looking at some of these new forms of exploitation, particularly job scams. I recently attended an ILO Recruitment Initiative conference in Geneva, and Europe was almost absent from the discussion. The focus was mainly on the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia and Africa.
Colleagues from the Philippines described the scale of recruitment scams on social media and other online platforms. Thousands of people pay very large amounts of money for jobs that do not exist. In some cases, people end up being trafficked and locked in warehouses or compounds, forced to work.
But there is also a European dimension to this. Some of the advertised jobs are in Europe. People may travel through the Middle East or other routes before eventually ending up here. This is something I would like to understand better. We need more evidence and data on how these recruitment scams are connected to migration to Europe.
It is also particularly worrying because the labour market has changed so much. Recruitment is increasingly digital, especially for young people. And I don’t see enough attention from the Commission or at political level to this new dimension of exploitation. So, personally, I don’t think the Quality Jobs Act, whatever form it eventually takes, will be enough to address this.
And there is another fundamental problem. If labour migration policies and migration and asylum policies do not change, we will continue to have a vicious circle of exploitation. People are trapped because their residence or work status is precarious. An employer, an intermediary or someone else can threaten them with the loss of their job, their documents or their legal status.
If your residence permit or work permit is tied to a particular employer, or if you are undocumented, you are much less able to report abuse or leave an exploitative situation. That is why changes to regularisation, residence permits and work permits, particularly permits that are not tied to a single employer, could make a real difference.
At the same time, employers have to take responsibility. Improving employment and working conditions is also a way of addressing labour shortages. The narrative is often: We need workers, we don’t have enough people. But then the question is: What are you offering those workers? If working conditions are poor and wages are low, of course it becomes difficult to attract people.
What about the European Labour Authority?
If I had to identify something more concrete that could make a difference on exploitation, I would focus on labour inspections and the role of the ELA. We need to work much more closely with labour inspectorates across the 27 member states and strengthen their capacity to identify and address exploitation.
Labour inspectors themselves sometimes say that they don’t know how to deal with certain situations, particularly when exploitation moves beyond the traditional framework of trafficking. We need to broaden that understanding from trafficking to labour exploitation more generally.
They have to work, whatever the conditions. They take whatever job is available, whatever they are paid. And they cannot simply move somewhere else because they are afraid of being detained or deported.
Recruitment is another area where there is still a lot to do, particularly when it comes to online job scams. I think there is also a need for much greater public awareness. I didn’t know about the scale of these scams until I started reading about them and discussing them with colleagues in Geneva.
If governments themselves say that it is almost impossible to stop because the scale is so enormous, that tells you how significant the problem is. And I think trade unions also have to adapt. Sometimes we are behind because the world of work is changing so quickly.
It is not only about artificial intelligence. The labour market itself is fundamentally different from what it was before, and we need to rethink how trade unions respond to these new forms of work and exploitation.
What is your biggest concern around the matter?
Ultimately, what concerns me most is the increase in precariousness. Over the past five years, we have seen a real increase in labour exploitation and abuse, but also in precariousness more broadly including housing, accommodation and the conditions in which people live. And I don’t see an obvious way out of it.
In the current political context, I fear that it could become even worse over the next five years. I have a concrete example of someone I know very well. They came to Europe seeking asylum about ten years ago. Since then, this person has been trying to obtain some form of legal status and has remained trapped in precarious work.
In a way, they are also “locked in”. Not physically, like the people confined in warehouses in Southeast Asia, but trapped by their legal and economic situation. They have to work, whatever the conditions. They take whatever job is available, whatever they are paid, even if it is €3 an hour. And they cannot simply move somewhere else because they are afraid of being detained or deported. At the same time, they continue to survive and send money back to their family in El Salvador.
For me, that is the really important connection: labour exploitation is deeply linked to precarious migration status. It creates a vicious circle. If you don’t have a secure residence or work permit, you have fewer choices, fewer alternatives and less ability to challenge exploitation. And this is not just about one person or one sector. It potentially affects millions of people.
We saw during COVID how essential many migrant workers were. We praised them and said we needed them. But many of those same people are still living in precarious conditions today. And that is what I find most frustrating.
