61 Amendments of Agnes JONGERIUS related to 2021/2253(INI)
Amendment 76 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital A
Recital A
A. whereas the EPSR Action Plan sets out concrete initiatives for the implementation of principles that are essential for building a stronger social Europe for just transitions and recovery; whereas expanding the care workforce will be a prerequisite for the implementation of these initiatives, including those pertaining to the principle 18 in the European Pillar of Social Rights;
Amendment 90 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital A c (new)
Recital A c (new)
Amendment 98 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital B
Recital B
B. whereas care encompasses all services to addresssupport autonomy and independence of persons in need for care, and by supporting their physical, psychological and, social needs of dependents, as well as support to, personal and household needs guarantees the equal exercise of the rights, dignity, autonomy, inclusion and well-being ofor all members of society;
Amendment 114 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital B c (new)
Recital B c (new)
Bc. whereas the austerity measures, applied in times of previous crises, have undermined development of quality public services accessible to everyone;
Amendment 118 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital B d (new)
Recital B d (new)
Amendment 120 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital B e (new)
Recital B e (new)
Be. whereas the Commission defines personal and household services as "a broad range of activities that contribute to wellbeing at home of families and individuals: child care, long-term care for the elderly and for persons with disabilities, cleaning, remedial classes, home repairs, gardening, ICT support, etc."; whereas in personal and household services the activities of care and non- care are highly intertwined with a vast proportion of workers performing both;
Amendment 121 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital B f (new)
Recital B f (new)
Bf. whereas at global level, personal and household services are usually described under the term domestic work; whereas the inclusion of domestic workers in the care workforce therefore recognises that care provision includes not only personal care, but also non-relational indirect care, which provides the necessary preconditions for the provision of personal care; whereas a large proportion of personal and household workers thus belongs to the care workforce;
Amendment 122 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital B g (new)
Recital B g (new)
Bg. whereas the COVID-19 crisis highlighted the key role played by workers in personal and household services within our societies, demonstrating the urgent need to ensure full recognition for these workers in all Member States together with collective bargaining rights, social security and social protection; whereas due to the persisting lack of proper recognition of these workers in several Member States, many of them have lost their job during the COVID-19 pandemic without being able to benefit from state wage compensation and job retention schemes; whereas the pandemic resulted in the loss of accommodation for many workers in personal and household services, as well as exposed them to violence and harassment at work;
Amendment 126 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital C
Recital C
C. whereas the stigma surrounding dependence and the need for care and support intersects with other grounds of discrimination, above all gender and sexual orientation, age, disability, nationality, ethnicity, as well as economic, social, migrant and other disadvantaged backgrounds;
Amendment 205 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital E d (new)
Recital E d (new)
Ed. whereas the drastic shift from standard work in the place of employment to telework during the COVID-19 pandemic revealed the need to better enforce, review and update the legislation related to working conditions in the digital environment and the use of artificial intelligence in the world of work;
Amendment 206 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital E e (new)
Recital E e (new)
Amendment 215 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital F
Recital F
F. whereas the provision of quality care depends on the existence of a sufficiently large and well-trained workforce, the creation of decent working conditions andthrough social dialogue and collective bargaining, fair wages, as well as integrated services, and adequate funding;
Amendment 249 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital G
Recital G
G. whereas the structures of care need to be changed from centralised institutions to home- and community-based care; whereas that shift has been too slow;
Amendment 267 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital H
Recital H
H. whereas the undervaluation and invisibility of care work are closely linked with the fact that women dominate in the care sector, as well as the fact that homecare and other personal and household services are provided behind closed doors;
Amendment 298 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital J
Recital J
J. whereas in all the Member States, pay in the care sector is well below the average pay and is connected with lower collective bargaining coverage in the care sector; whereas those employees working in the for-profit and non-profit sectors do not have access to a union representation and collective bargaining;
Amendment 313 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital K
Recital K
K. whereas 80 % of all long-term care in Europe is provided by informal carers, which makes care an extremely gendered issue; whereas informal care provision is associated with reduction of employment rates, increase of poverty and social exclusion rates, reduced mental health and increased feelings of social isolation and loneliness;
Amendment 332 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital L
Recital L
L. whereas the high numbers of care recipients who are dependent on informal care are directly linked to the inaccessibility and unaffordability of quality professional services; as well as the choice of many Member States to rely on unpaid informal care as the major source of care provision;
Amendment 368 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital M h (new)
Recital M h (new)
Mh. whereas care remains one of the main fields of reproduction of gender archetypes, which are further reinforced by the lack of investment in quality services and gender bias in other policies that disproportionally affect women’s self- determination in social and professional life, such as tax benefit system;
Amendment 377 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital O
Recital O
O. whereas in 2019, 22.2 % of children in the EU – almost 18 million – were at risk of poverty or social exclusion; whereas children from low-income families, homeless children, children with a disability, children with a migrant background, children with a minority ethnic background, particularly Roma children, children in institutional care, children in precarious family situations, single-parent families, LGBTIQ+ families, and families where parents are away to work abroad face serious difficulties, such as severe housing deprivation or overcrowding, barriers in accessing fundamental and basic services, such as access to quality care, adequate nutrition and decent housing; whereas children with disabilities in the EU are disproportionately more likely to be placed in institutional care than children without disabilities, and appear far less likely to benefit from efforts to enable a transition from institutional to family-based care1a; whereas the European Child Guarantee is an EU instrument whose objective is to prevent and combat poverty and social exclusion by guaranteeing free and effective access for children in need to key services; essential care services, such as early childhood education and care, educational and school-based activities, healthcare and at least one healthy meal per school day, and effective access for all children in need to healthy nutrition and adequate housing1b; _________________ 1a European parliament Resolution of 29 April 2021 on European Child Guarantee 1b Council Recommendation (EU) 2021/1004 establishing a European Child Guarantee.
Amendment 380 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital P
Recital P
P. whereas access to quality care services, especially long-term care, is increasingly preconditioned on individual and family income; whereas households with low incomes, lower educational levels, and migrant households experience the greatest difficulties in accessing formal home-based long-term care services; whereas across the EU, one third, and in five Member States even more than half of the households, report that they are in need of professional long- term care services but cannot access them due to financial reasons1a; _________________ 1a Social Protection Committee and the European Commission (2021) Long-term care report
Amendment 419 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital P h (new)
Recital P h (new)
Ph. whereas the data on quality of care services is almost exclusively based on non-standard client satisfaction surveys;
Amendment 420 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital P i (new)
Recital P i (new)
Pi. whereas difficulties associated with the provision of adequate, decent and affordable housing, especially for older people, single persons, persons with disability, persons at risk of poverty and social exclusion, families with young children and single parents, significantly hinder access to quality care services;
Amendment 421 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital P j (new)
Recital P j (new)
Amendment 422 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital P k (new)
Recital P k (new)
Pk. whereas unions play an important role in representing employees’ interests, as well as raising and maintaining standards across the care sector in non- profit, for-profit and public care;
Amendment 423 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital P l (new)
Recital P l (new)
Amendment 424 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital P m (new)
Recital P m (new)
Pm. whereas more than half of care workers say they do not earn enough to cover basic needs such as housing and food, and 31% do not have adequate access to personal protective equipment1a; _________________ 1a https://www.finanzwende- recherche.de/wp- content/uploads/2021/10/Finanzwende_B ourgeronMetzWolf_2021_Private-Equity- Investoren-in-der-Pflege_20211013.pdf
Amendment 425 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital P n (new)
Recital P n (new)
Pn. whereas despite the substantial resourcing needs in the Member States care systems, as well as the EU citizens’ expectations for a more social Europe after the pandemic, social targets, including investment in quality care services, have been left out of the EU recovery mechanisms;
Amendment 426 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital P o (new)
Recital P o (new)
Po. whereas in 2018, the estimated annual investment gap in social infrastructure stood at 100-150 billion euro1a; _________________ 1a https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/default/files /economy-finance/dp074_en.pdf
Amendment 441 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1 a (new)
Paragraph 1 a (new)
1a. Highlights that the genuine choice should extend to the family and community of a care recipient and should entail the decision on whether or not to provide informal care, and with what intensity;
Amendment 452 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 2
Paragraph 2
2. Stresses the importance of an integrated approach to common European action on care that pays equal attention to people’s physical, psychological and social, personal and household needs;
Amendment 465 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 3
Paragraph 3
3. Highlights the need to increase funding for both formal and informal care across the EU to guarantee equal access for dependants to affordable quality care services, as well as an active professional life for carers, and therefore calls on the Member States to make the best use of the European structural and investment funds, including the ESF+, as well as the Recovery and Resilience Facility, for investing in care; and thereby accelerate its recovery from the negative effects of the austerity measures, privatisation of care and the pandemic, measuring up to and creating synergies with the standards set for investment in digital and green transformation, with gender equality and inclusion of persons from vulnerable groups as the guiding principles; calls on the Commission to develop guidelines and recommendations for Member States in this sense;
Amendment 471 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 3
Paragraph 3
3. Highlights the need to increase funding for both formal and informal care across the EU to guarantee equal access for dependants to affordable quality care services, as well as an active professional life for carerscarer’s opportunity to earn fair wages and develop a career in the sector through skills certification and validation, and therefore calls on the Member States to make the best use of the European structural and investment funds, including the ESF+, as well as the Recovery and Resilience Facility, for investing in care;
Amendment 498 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 4
Paragraph 4
4. Emphasises that a substantial proportion of care models, services and facilities are outdated ands that care recipientsey put the needs of care providers, rather than the rights of persons in need for care in focus and that persons in need for care should be placed at the centre of care plans;
Amendment 517 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 6
Paragraph 6
6. Calls on the Commission to set ambitious targets for care services in consultation with the Member Statestake leadership in the realm of care by setting ambitious targets regarding access, quality and sustainability of care services in consultation with the Member States and social partners; stresses that the EU should make use of the ILO’s 5R framework for decent care work: recognise, reduce and redistribute unpaid care work, reward paid care work and guarantee care workers’ representation, social dialogue and collective bargaining;
Amendment 560 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 7 c (new)
Paragraph 7 c (new)
7c. Calls on the Commission to address in the European care strategy the challenging working and employment conditions of all workers in personal and household services, including care and not care work; stresses the importance of adopting measures that facilitate the recognition of these workers;
Amendment 561 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 7 d (new)
Paragraph 7 d (new)
7d. Calls on the Commission to explicitly include the fight against all forms of abuse of older persons in the European care Strategy in order to combat the worrying phenomena such as non-assistance, neglect and the undue use of physical or chemical restraints, particularly in the field of long-term care and support; calls on the Member States to develop trainings for informal and formal carers to avoid such abuse as well as establish independent and effective mechanisms for reporting and redressing it;
Amendment 570 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 9
Paragraph 9
9. Calls on the Member States to design childcare, education and other policies and measures in support of children and their families in an inclusive manner and one that upholds the swift and efficient implementation of the European Child Guarantee, sensitive to the needs of children in vulnerable situation, in or at the risk of poverty and social deprivation, and one that upholds the swift and efficient implementation of the European Child Guarantee; highlights that the COVID-19 crisis and the arrival of refugees following the war in Ukraine will further exacerbate the situation of children at risk of poverty and social inclusion or need access to quality care; therefore calls on the Member States and the Commission to urgently increase the funding of the Child Guarantee with a dedicated budget of at least €20 billion, to combat poverty affecting children and their families and to contribute to the goal of reducing poverty by at least half in all Member States by 2030; furthermore, calls on the Member States to neutralise all national expenditures dedicated to the eradication of child poverty within the implementation of fiscal rules;
Amendment 588 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 11
Paragraph 11
11. Calls on the Member States to provide continuous holistic support to parents, including parental entitlements and measures that encourage a more substantial role for men in the sharing of care responsibilities, including for very young children; underlines the importance of adequate, accessible and affordable public care structures and services to single parents, the vast majority of whom are women, and to families with low and unsteady incomes, at risk of poverty and social exclusion;
Amendment 594 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 11
Paragraph 11
11. Calls on the Member States to provide continuous holistic support to parents, including parental entitlements and measures that encourage a more substantial role for men in the sharing of care responsibilities, including for very young children, as well as children with disabilities;
Amendment 598 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 11 a (new)
Paragraph 11 a (new)
11 a. Underlines that provision of quality childcare is largely determined by investments and improvements in the employment and working conditions of the workers in the childcare sector; reminds of the role that social dialogue plays in developing practical tools for improved access to, availability and affordability of childcare;
Amendment 699 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 17 b (new)
Paragraph 17 b (new)
17b. Calls on the Member States to guarantee immediate and full access of persons enjoying temporary protection to quality care services, without discrimination on any ground and with special attention to their physical and psychological needs generated by the circumstances of war and their displacement, and to secure, at the same time, equal and decent working and employment conditions and fair pay for the persons enjoying temporary protection who will seek employment in the care sector; underlines that additional capacities and investment in the care sector are essential to this end;
Amendment 739 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 18 c (new)
Paragraph 18 c (new)
18d. Stresses that the sets of targets for quality long-term care should inevitably include the reduction of inequality in the access to long-term care;
Amendment 740 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 18 d (new)
Paragraph 18 d (new)
18e. Calls for quality indicators for long-term care that are based on the rights of the persons in need of care, the maintenance of their independence and autonomy as well as social inclusion, and focusing on the expected outcomes such as the improvement of well-being of persons in need for long-term care and support, the evolution of healthy life years;
Amendment 842 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 23
Paragraph 23
23. Calls on the Member States to ensure decent working conditions and the right for all workers to join a representative trade union in the care sector, both formal and informal, and to adopt high standards of occupational health and safety, in line with and beyond the ambition of the recently adopted EU strategic framework on health and safety at work 2021-2027;
Amendment 848 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 23 a (new)
Paragraph 23 a (new)
23a. Calls on the Member States to adopt high standards of occupational health and safety, in line with and beyond the ambition of the recently adopted EU strategic framework on health and safety at work 2021-2027, paying special attention to the specific challenges of work in the care sector, which often includes exposure of workers to hazardous substances or medicinal products, work in the potentially infectious environments, as well as mental and psychosocial risks related to emotionally demanding work and encountering adverse social behaviour;
Amendment 858 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 23 b (new)
Paragraph 23 b (new)
23b. Repeats its call on the Commission to raise the level of ambition and to propose a broader and more comprehensive legislation that would allow better prevention and management of work-related musculoskeletal disorders and rheumatic diseases, as well as mitigate psychosocial risks and negative effects of care work on well-being of workers;
Amendment 861 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 23 c (new)
Paragraph 23 c (new)
23 c. Is concerned about the high share of minimum wage and sub-minimum earners among the care professionals, persistent gender pay gap and discrepancies in the pay levels of specific care professions; welcomes therefore the Commission proposals for a directive on adequate minimum wages, that would ensure a more decent pay to the lowest paid workers in the care sector, and for a pay transparency directive, tackling persistently inadequate enforcement of the fundamental right to equal pay for equal work of equal value in the EU;
Amendment 864 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 23 d (new)
Paragraph 23 d (new)
23d. Strongly encourages the Member States to provide, with the support of EU funds, training to care staff on the rights of care recipients, particularly the rights enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child;
Amendment 866 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 23 e (new)
Paragraph 23 e (new)
23e. Calls on Member States to recognize COVID-19 as an occupational disease in the care sector;
Amendment 869 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 24
Paragraph 24
24. Calls on the Member States to strengthen social dialogue and promote collective bargaining and collective agreements in the care sector, both profit and non-profit, as crucial mechanisms for the improvement of employment and working conditions and for tackling the gender pay gap, and as the most effective tools for securing an increase in the minimum wage and in wages in general; calls on the Member States to remove all obstacles to the creation of unions in this industry and to facilitate the process of union access to workers in order to ensure the right and freedom of association;
Amendment 890 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 25
Paragraph 25
25. Recalls that mobile and migrant workers play a significant role in the provision of both residential care and home care in the EUresidential, community- and home-based care in the EU; calls on the Commission and the Member States to ensure fair mobility and recruitment of workers from the EU and from the third countries by improving the reciprocal recognition of their qualifications and by closing the gaps in transnational social protection; repeats its call for proper monitoring and enforcement of rules pertaining to mobility and better informing workers of their rights;
Amendment 951 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 27 d (new)
Paragraph 27 d (new)
27d. Calls on the Member States to present an adequate framework for declaration of personal and household services, and to invest in flexible quality professional services to halt precarisation of care and discourage consumption of care services that involve undeclared work;
Amendment 953 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 27 e (new)
Paragraph 27 e (new)
27e. Urges the Member States that have not yet done so to ratify and implement ILO conventions no. 189 concerning decent work for domestic workers, no. 190 on violence and harassment in the world of work and no. 149 on nursing personnel;
Amendment 955 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 27 f (new)
Paragraph 27 f (new)
27f. Calls on targeted revision of Directive 89/391/EEC to ensure the inclusion of domestic workers within its scope;
Amendment 959 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 28
Paragraph 28
28. Stresses the utmost importance of mainstreaming care and measures for the empowerment of women, dependent persons andpersons in need for care and support as well as vulnerable individuals in all relevant national and EU policies, together with encouraging increased public investment in accessible, affordable and high quality care services; calls for these priorities to be reflected in the external dimensions of the EU policies, as well as pre-accession and official development assistance; emphasises that a rights-based approach to care would enable such a mainstreaming across often disconnected policy fields, such as health, employment, pensions and social affairs, spatial planning, education, culture, mobility, digital policies, etc.;
Amendment 975 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 28 c (new)
Paragraph 28 c (new)
28 c. Firmly believes that the implementation of national recovery and resilience plans must include targeted actions for the improvement of gender equality in all spheres of life, including measures for reduction and redistribution of unpaid care and household work;
Amendment 985 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 29 b (new)
Paragraph 29 b (new)
29b. Calls on the Commission to carefully consider the calls for a Care deal for Europe and to provide the ground for transition to care economy with relevant investment and legislation at the Union level;
Amendment 987 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 30
Paragraph 30
30. Calls on the Member States to depart from the narrow focus on market processes and monetised economy and to adopt approaches to measuring and valuing the contribution and outputs of care, in particular unpaid care and houseworkdomestic work; calls on the Commission and the Member States to include alternative measures of economic and social well-being in the policy-making process;
Amendment 1000 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 30 c (new)
Paragraph 30 c (new)
30 c. Points to the clear benefits of minimum income and minimum pension schemes for timely and effective access to care and support services, as well as for ensuring decent living standard to carers, especially those providing informal unpaid care;
Amendment 1001 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 30 d (new)
Paragraph 30 d (new)
30d. Calls on the Commission to link the upcoming care strategy to the European action plan for the social economy, raising the awareness of the potential of social economy in improving the working conditions in the care sector as well as creating opportunities for better access of women to quality jobs;
Amendment 1009 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 31
Paragraph 31
31. Calls on the Member States to formulate and revise their care policies in permanent dialogue with social partners, experts, civil society and representative organisations of care recipients ands well as formal and informal carers;