In view of the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak and its on impact transport workers, we sent a letter to Adina Vălean, Commissioner for Transport and Nicolas Schmit, Commissioner for Jobs and Social Rights where we outlined our concerns, and what a plan to remedy the current situation should look like.

On the occasion International Women’s Day, the ETF presents a teaser of the findings from the ETF survey on how to make the transport sector fit for women workers.

A large-scale raid at the new Amazon parcel distribution centre in Großebersdorf, near Vienna in Austria took place mid-February. In total, 174 employees at 36 subcontractors (transport companies) were subject to inspection. Violations of labour legislation were found in 49 cases and a bogus company with 20 employees was detected.

We were sad to learn about another bankruptcy in civil aviation today – UK’s regional airline Flybe. The spread of the COVID-19 has had an important impact in accelerating the process towards the bankruptcy of the airline, which represents just one of the symptoms of a Europe-wide crisis. Decisive action needs to be taken to keep Europe moving. To prevent a complete collapse of the air transport networks in the immediate future, the EU, European countries and other key authorities such as EASA need to come up with a detailed, clear and effective contingency plan.

The ETF calls for a European directive on mandatory human rights due diligence and responsible business conduct. Companies need to finally be held accountable for the impacts of their operations, without prejudice to joint and several liability. A European directive would bring us closer to stopping violations of human rights that continue to take place in multinational operations, and their supply and subcontracting chains.

The ITF and ETF Inland Navigation Sections are very concerned that the Captain of the Viking Sigyn faces a long prison sentence after the tragic accident on the river Danube in Budapest May 2019.

Trailer for the documentary “If Workers Are United” is now available! The documentary will be released on International Workers’ Day, 1 May 2020. “If the workers are united” is a documentary on

The International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) and the European Transport Workers’ Federation (ETF) today call upon ship operators to return lashing to shore based dock workers.

Yesterday marked the celebration of the 20th anniversary of the EU Social Dialogue Committee for Road Transport between social partners IRU and ETF. ETF and IRU reminded the EU officials that driver shortage is alarmingly increasing in the EU, with 20% of unfilled drivers’ positions in passenger and goods transport in 2019.

ETF attends first meeting, hopefully, the first of many to come, with EU Commissioner for Transport, Adina Vălean. We hope that this is the start of fruitful cooperation that will shape the future of Fair Transport for Europe.

For the first time, the ETF land transport sections came together to discuss the topic of digitalisation and automation within the scope of ETF’s “ETF Automation & Digitalisation Toolkit (EADT)” project.

ETF president Frank Moreels and General Secretary Livia Spera met with Tomas Eneroth, Swedish Minister for Infrastructure, and Mattias Landgren, his State Secretary, today in Brussels.