Care workers are mainly women and migrants, which make the care sector an interesting field to verify the dynamics of segregation and exclusion that affect the labour market. At the same time, it is a challenging testing ground, which allows to design and verify new measures to counteract discrimination and promote social inclusion.
The Care4care project aims at investigating in a comparative and multidisciplinary perspective the working conditions of care workers and their perception of their working environment and dynamics in six EU Member States (France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and Sweden) in order to develop suitable tools to improve job quality and counteract discrimination in the sector, such as: elaborating policy strategies to tackle the undervaluation of care work, with particular attention to the key role that trade unions, employers’ associations as well as equality and monitoring bodies can play both at national and EU level; designing training programs to empower trade unions, families’ and employers’ associations to improve job quality in the sector; setting up of a network on care work, which will implement a web platform accessible to care workers, in order to improve their rights’ awareness.
More precisely, the project aims at highlighting the risks and conditions of vulnerability of the target, with a specific focus on discrimination and socio-economic undervaluation.
The ambition of the Consortium is, then, to create a model of analysis and regulation of the care sector that can be replicated in other European countries and can bring out new relevant strategies for intervention in order to elaborate legislative and policy proposals at the national and the EU level.
The project aims at giving voice to care workers and to their representatives in the design and delivery of policies and measures that affect their lives. To this end, it is necessary to raise awareness and consciousness among care workers and trade unions by making rights clear and usable for workers and enhancing collective bargaining strategies.
Lastly, target of the project are workers employed in the public and private sector, caring for people with disabilities, the elderly and sick people: home caregivers, basic care workers, social and care workers, health professionals with at most a Bachelor’s degree such as nurse.
