When did dignified work become radical?

Workers’ Rights Are Democratic Rights

When did the idea that people deserve dignity at work become radical?

The notion that a person should be able to earn a living wage, work in safe conditions, have a voice in decisions that affect their livelihood, and rely on social protections in times of need was once widely understood as a cornerstone of democratic and social progress. Yet across the Western Balkans and Southeast Europe today, these demands are increasingly portrayed as unrealistic, unaffordable, or even harmful to economic competitiveness. Calls for stronger labour protections are often framed as barriers to investment, collective bargaining as an obstacle to flexibility, and social protection as a burden on public finances. At the same time, workers across the region continue to face insecure employment, rising living costs, workplace safety concerns, and growing pressure to seek opportunities abroad.

Social democracy begins from a simple proposition: political freedom is incomplete without social and economic security. The right to vote, speak, and organise is weakened when a person can be dismissed without effective protection, cannot live on their wage, works in unsafe conditions, or lacks security in illness, unemployment, or old age. Workers’ rights are not peripheral social policy. They are part of democracy’s institutional foundation.

Historically, social democracy extended democratic principles beyond parliament and into the economy. Universal suffrage gave citizens a political voice; trade unions, collective bargaining, labour law, and social protection gave working people a voice where they spend much of their lives. The eight-hour working day, paid leave, safety standards, maternity protection, pensions, and the right to organise were not gifts from benevolent employers. They were democratic achievements secured through struggle, collective organisation, and negotiation.

Dignity at work means fair pay, safe conditions, predictable working time, protection from discrimination, and a meaningful voice in workplace decisions. It also requires the practical ability to refuse degrading or dangerous work without facing destitution. Formal freedom means little when material insecurity leaves a person unable to say no. When employer authority is not balanced by enforceable rights and collective representation, inequality at work spills into society.

Kosovo illustrates the scale of the problem. According to the European Commission’s Kosovo Report 2025, the labour-force participation rate was only 43.3 per cent in 2024, while the employment rate stood at 38.6 per cent. The official unemployment rate fell to 10.8 per cent, but this figure captures only those actively seeking work and conceals the broader extent of exclusion. The gender gap is severe: 55.9 per cent of working-age men were employed, compared with only 21.2 per cent of women. Among young people aged 15 to 24, 31.4 per cent were neither in employment, education, nor training.[1]

The deeper problem is the exclusion of women and young people from stable employment. Across the Western Balkans Six, the Regional Cooperation Council reports an average employment rate of 51 per cent for women and 70 per cent for men, a gap of almost 20 percentage points.[2]

Care responsibilities are central to this inequality. Where childcare, eldercare, and disability-support services are unavailable or unaffordable, women absorb the deficit through unpaid labour or withdrawal from employment. Care is not merely a private family matter. It is labour-market infrastructure, gender-equality policy, and economic policy. Any serious agenda for dignity at work must address whether people can enter employment, remain employed, and benefit from work on equal terms.

Job quality matters as much as job creation. Kosovo’s average gross monthly wage rose to €713 in 2025, according to the Kosovo Agency of Statistics. The difference between sectors remained substantial: €840 in the public sector and €666 in the private sector.[3] These averages say little about wage distribution, household needs, insecure contracts, or unpaid overtime. An average can rise while many workers remain unable to secure a decent standard of living.

The government’s announcement that the increase of the minimum wage to €500 would affect approximately 150,000 employees is therefore significant. If around 36 per cent of employees are directly affected, this does not merely demonstrate the measure’s broad reach. It reveals an economy in which a very large share of employment remains concentrated in low-paid and often low-skilled work. The challenge is not only to create more jobs, but to create more skilled, productive, and better-paid employment.

Research by Edison Jakurti, commissioned by the Institute for Social Policy “Musine Kokalari”, found that only one in five wages in Kosovo could be considered a living wage.[4] The distinction matters. A minimum wage establishes a legal floor; a living wage asks whether full-time work allows a worker and their household to meet basic needs and live with dignity. Public debate should therefore move beyond the size of the minimum wage and ask what level of income constitutes a decent livelihood.

Workplace safety provides another test. In Kosovo, reported non-fatal occupational accidents increased from 319 in 2023 to 505 in 2024, while recorded fatalities declined from eleven to seven.[1] The increase may partly reflect better reporting and should not automatically be interpreted as an equivalent rise in the underlying incidence. It nevertheless underlines the need for credible enforcement, reliable data, and adequately resourced labour inspection. No development model is successful if preventable injury is treated as an acceptable cost.

The weakness of collective representation deepens these vulnerabilities. The European Commission reported that the mandate of Kosovo’s Social Economic Council expired in 2023 without new members being appointed, that social dialogue remained limited, and that private-sector trade unions were “almost non-existent”.[1] Rights that exist on paper are difficult to exercise individually when workers fear dismissal or retaliation. Collective organisation is the mechanism through which unequal bargaining power is corrected.

During the post-socialist transition, the worker was displaced by the entrepreneur, investor, and consumer as the central figure of economic policy. Privatisation and market liberalisation were presented as technical necessities, while unions and social protections were associated with an obsolete order. Individuals were expected to become flexible and personally responsible for managing structural insecurity.

That discourse is now colliding with social reality. In the RCC’s Balkan Barometer 2024, rising prices and inflation were identified as a major concern by 64 per cent of Western Balkan respondents, compared with 27 per cent who identified unemployment. At the same time, businesses ranked labour shortages and brain drain among their most serious constraints.[5] The contradiction is evident: economies seek to retain workers while resisting the wages, security, public services, and representation that would give people reasons to remain.

Technological change adds further pressure. Platform work, algorithmic management, and artificial intelligence can raise productivity, but can also shift risk onto workers, intensify surveillance, and obscure employment responsibility. Social democracy should not oppose innovation. It should ensure that productivity gains support higher wages, shorter working time, retraining, and greater security.

A credible workers’ rights agenda must begin with enforcement. Labour laws must be applied, inspectorates adequately staffed, violations sanctioned promptly, and occupational safety treated as non-negotiable. Minimum wages should be reviewed transparently and regularly, while policy should incorporate the concept of a living wage. Economic and social councils must function as real negotiating institutions, and collective bargaining must expand beyond the public sector.

Protection must also cover platform workers, economically dependent self-employed people, seasonal and domestic workers, migrants, and workers in the informal economy. Public procurement and state aid should be conditional on compliance with labour standards. The state should not use public money to reward employers who violate workers’ rights. Social protection should be more universal and portable, so changing jobs or employment status does not mean losing basic security.

Three areas require urgent regional intervention.

First, trade union organisation must be rebuilt through stronger protection against anti-union discrimination and employer retaliation, wider sectoral bargaining, and higher collective-agreement coverage. Trade unions themselves must improve organisational capacity, internal democracy, and outreach, especially in the private sector and among younger workers.

Second, the region needs sustained public investment in care. Affordable childcare, eldercare, and disability-support services should be treated as essential public infrastructure. Municipal and community-based services require predictable funding, while care workers need better wages, training, and working conditions. The disproportionate burden of unpaid care work on women must be recognised and reduced through policies consistent with the ILO’s 5R framework.

Third, governments must build accessible systems of lifelong learning. Reskilling and upskilling programmes should prioritise workers in declining industries, low-skilled jobs, and precarious employment. Training should be designed jointly by public institutions, employers, unions, and educational institutions so that it responds to labour-market needs without reducing education to employers’ short-term demands.

These priorities belong in social-democratic programmes across the region. They are regional issues because labour migration, investment policy, supply chains, and competition cross national borders. European integration should promote upward social convergence, not competition based on cheap labour and weak protection.

None of this is radical. The radical position is to accept that people can work full time and remain poor; that preventable injuries are a normal price of development; that women should compensate for inadequate care systems through unpaid labour; or that young people must emigrate to find dignity and professional opportunity. Protecting workers is not hostility toward business. It is the democratic regulation of economic power.

Workers’ rights turn abstract freedom into lived freedom. They give people the security to speak, organise, refuse, and participate. Democracy must also exist where people work.

If dignity at work is considered radical today, it is because insecurity has been normalised. The answer is not to lower our expectations of democracy, but to extend democracy into the economy again. If defending dignity at work has become radical, it is a position worth defending.

References

[1] European Commission, Kosovo 2025 Report, pp. 55 and 75–76.

[2] Regional Cooperation Council, “In the Western Balkans Six, Women Employed Close to 20% Less than Men While Pay Gaps Persist”, 8 March 2026.

[3] Kosovo Agency of Statistics, Average Salary in Kosovo: Gross and Net, 2012–2025, updated 1 June 2026.

[4] Jakurti, Edison, A Living Wage for Workers in Kosova: Striving for a Basic but Decent Livelihood, Institute for Social Policy “Musine Kokalari”.

[5] Regional Cooperation Council, Balkan Barometer 2024: Public Opinion and Balkan Barometer 2024: Business Opinion.