Unilever : European Framework-Agreement between the Unilever management and the Unilever EWC on the future of work – Barcelona 2.0

This is an important transnational agreement. Its signatories rightly describe it as “an ambitious and unprecedented initiative and agenda, which will require a very significant resource investment”.
The European Framework-Agreement on the Future of Work, signed on 6 March, between Unilever’s management and its European Works Council, includes measures that management has promised to fund with a “sufficient budget”. These involve: 1/ forming joint working “teams” in every country to establish individual training plans for each site and each employee; 2/ asking these joint teams to draw up “employability programmes” for locations where the deployment of digitalisation is likely to negatively impact job numbers; 3/ engage with employee representatives to explore new models of employment that will simultaneously meet the business’s needs for flexibility and workers’ needs for security. The text encourages local agreements on pilot experiments. The next stage is to arrive at “co-creations”, without in the process challenging either unilateral decisions taken by management or collective bargaining. 4/ engaging, likewise, in discussions on professional transitions, either inside or outside Unilever, again with the aim of “co-creating”.