Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund

With the "Fair Working Conditions" project, we are setting up a transnational advisory network for posted workers in Europe.

The network consists of trade union and trade-union-related advisory centres in some of the countries of origin of posted workers: Croatia, Poland, Hungary, Romania and Slovenia, as well as in the destination country of Germany.

In the countries of origin, we are setting up information centres that inform employees about their rights on the German labour market before they even leave their home country. After they return home, the information centres and the Fair Mobility advisory centres in Germany help employees to assert any claims they may have against their employers and with regard to social issues, e.g. health insurance, accidents at the workplace, etc.

The information centres will form networks with stakeholders from the fields of politics and academia, from public authorities, social security institutions and civil society who work with the aim of improving the working conditions of posted workers.

Part of the project consists of a trainee programme. Advisors visit and learn from each other as they go about their usual advisory work.

The information centres are located within trade union confederations in Poland, Romania, Slovenia and Croatia. In Hungary, the metalworkers union VASAS will open an information centre for posted workers. All partners will work closely with DGB's Fair Mobility advisory network. The advisers at the information centre regularly get together at workshops to further their training. Fair Mobility employees and other speakers train the advisors on the issue of the legal situation of the German labour market. Each advisory centre focuses on a particular industry. The OPZZ in Poland specifically addresses carers working in private households. VASAS in Hungary is a metalworking union dedicated to postings in the metal industry. The Romanian BNS and the Croatian SSSH will each place their emphasis on the construction industry, while the advisory centre of the ZSSS in Slovenia specialises in posted lorry drivers.

In order to inform employees and multipliers, the project runs its own website, publishes a short explanatory film and is carrying out a campaign on posting in the construction industry.

Fair Working Conditions is a project of the Federal Board of DGB / German Trade Union Confederation. The project management team is located within the DGB-Bildungswerk Bund, which coordinates the entire network, in cooperation with the Fair Mobility project management team.

Report and Evalutation 2019/2020

Posted workers are forced to work in a shadow world of the labour market in which labour law is circumvented and occupational safety and health requirements are undermined. Therefore, the project aims to strengthen the transnational cooperation, raise the accessibility of information and promote the evidence basis regarding the situation of posted workers. The project "FAIR working conditions" has a twofold approach of counselling posted workers and transferring the gained information to trade unions, public authorities,
stakeholders and policy makers. Recently, the work of the project was evaluated, concentrating on the statistical findings of the counselled cases in the information centers, that in were in sum 1800 cases with 1958 workers involved.