Background information

The statement of the representative social partners of this sector, namely: Eurocommerce and UNI Europa, is to point out that they remain committed to protecting employees and their jobs, suppliers and customers, and maintaining this essential economic activity during pandemic crisis. They expect also the commitment from the EU and national authorities. The statement concerns the situation of 29 million people work in the retail and wholesale sector in Europe.

Content of measure

The EU social partners in the retail and wholesale sector stress that they are working together to ensure the continued safety of its workforce who are interacting daily with European consumers, during the pandemic.

They also ask EU and national authorities governments to engage with social partners in drawing up an exit strategy and support measures to avoid significant permanent closures of shops and the social impact these risk to local employment and the viability of rural communities and town centres, and to help return the sector to normality after the virus has subsided.

In the opinion of EuroCommerce and UNI-Europa, employees in food retail and wholesale need to be classified as essential workers, who should be given help if schools and childcare facilities have closed; while in frontier regions, national authorities must let them cross the border freely to get to work.

Use of measure

There is no information on the use.

Target groups

Workers	Businesses	Citizens
Applies to all workers	Sector specific set of companies	Does not apply to citizens

Actors and funding

Actors	Funding
EU level social partners	No special funding required

Social partners

Social partners' role in designing the measure and form of involvement:

	Trade unions	Employers' organisations
Role	Agreed (outcome) incl. social partner initiative	Agreed (outcome) incl. social partner initiative
Form	Direct consultation outside a formal body	Direct consultation outside a formal body

Social partners' role in the implementation, monitoring and assessment phase:

• Social partners jointly
• Main level of involvement: EU level

Involvement

The statement was an independent initiative of the social partners. It was prepared by social partner organizations representative at European level for this sector: Eurocommerce on the side of employers and UNI Europa on the side of trade unions.

Views and reactions

This was own initiative of social partners.

Sectors and occupations

This case is not occupation-specific.

Sources

• 08 April 2020: Joint statement EuroCommerce/UNI-Europa (www.uni-europa.org)