DECENT WORK AND THE QUESTION OF FAIR REMUNERATION IN THE EUROPEAN UNION

Abstract

The right to work is constituted by a variety of rights and obligations and is characterized by the doctrine as a “complex normative aggregate”. This right contains the following components: the prohibition of slavery and forced labor; om to work and choice of profession; the principle of nondiscrimination and equal treatment; the freedom to look for a job; the right to decent work. However, there is no unanimous definition of what constitutes decent work. For the International Labor Organization (ILO) the right to decent work implies that “work has to be of an acceptable quality in terms of working conditions, sense of value and satisfaction, employer-employee relations, and remuneration”. The right to a fair remuneration can be found in various human rights instruments. In this sense, it is embodied in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; the European Social Charter; the Protocol of San Salvador. However, the right to fair remuneration is not expressly enshrined in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (CFREU). This omission was particularly noted in the European Union (EU) during the euro and sovereign debt crisis. In this period, several EU Member States adopted austerity programs in order to balance public accounts which entailed wage cuts, which were contested in the national courts and the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). However, the CJEU did not acknowledge the various requests and missed an opportunity to densify the content of the right to healthy, safe and decent working conditions enshrined in Article 31 (1) of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union in line with human rights legal instruments.