PERHOUSE - Personal and household services (PHS) in Central and Eastern European Countries: Improving working conditions and services through industrial relations

General information

Code: PERHOUSE
Period: 1.8.2022 - 31.7.2024
Project leader at FDV: doc.dr. Branko Bembič
Co-financiers:

Projekt sofinancira Evropska unija, št. projekta 101052340. 

Abstract

The PERHOUSE project analyses the characteristics of personal and household services (PHS) and the challenges related to service quality, working conditions, and industrial relations in this sector in Central and Eastern European countries. For the purposes of the project, PHS is defined as a broad range of services performed within households and for households, such as childcare, care for the elderly and disabled, cleaning, minor repairs, and other household tasks. One of the project's aims is to explore industrial relations and the potential for social dialogue in the PHS sector in the Central and Eastern European region, as well as to examine the connection with EU-level social dialogue structures. The research is coordinated by the Central European Labour Studies Institute (CELSI) from Slovakia, with project partners including the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Ljubljana (FDV UL), Charles University from the Czech Republic, the University of Tartu from Estonia, Maria Curie-Sklodowska University from Poland, MK 2025 from North Macedonia, and the European Association of Service Providers for Persons with Disabilities (EASPD).

Results / Key findings

The sector of personal and household services (PHS) in Slovenia is very diverse. We looked at three key segments: care for the elderly and disabled, childcare and households support services - home cleaning.

 Most of the problems in the field of quality and accessibility of services, as well as wages and working conditions, are interrelated and arise from the problem of (in)adequate public funding and the organization of the public service. The care of the elderly and the disabled is partially financed from public funds, but insufficiently, and unpaid informal caregivers (especially family members) who provide most of the care are most affected. Due to the high-quality and relatively accessible institutional public system of preschool education, PHS in the field of childcare are less developed and mostly informal (illegal work). Supportive PHS for households are mostly provided on the market and are accessible only to people with higher incomes, the needs of a large part of the population are not met.

In all segments of PHS, the main challenge is low pay and poor working conditions. Nevertheless, working conditions are much better when PHS are provided as public services. When they are left to the market, they are mainly based on precarious work, often done illegally. Informal employment and lack of social security dominate childcare and home cleaning. In caring for the elderly and the disabled, the challenges are mainly long working days, unpredictable schedules and the area of health and safety at work. Solving these problems is essential to overcome labor shortage problems.

Workers from all three fields that we studied are mostly in favor of union organizing, which is widespread only in the field of care for the elderly and the disabled, where social dialogue is also relatively developed. An exception is the field of personal assistance, where neither the government nor the formal providers are ready to assume the role of social partners in collective bargaining. In the segment of support services for households, the majority of PHS is carried out by artisans and small businesses, but the sectoral collective agreement in this sector does not have widespread applicability so its use is limited.

Key words

industrial relations, personal and household services, working conditions