where qualifications are equal, they tend to work more in administrative jobs, while men are predominant in manual or technical professions.8 Working-class women are also more likely not to be in work, particularly in Southern Europe, thus automatically increasing the proportion of men among people in work. And although there may be considerable differences between countries, the employment rate for men remains higher than that for women in all European countries, without exception.
The working class in Europe consists predominantly of low-skilled and unskilled manual and white-collar workers (40 per cent) – mainly manual workers and domestic cleaners – and skilled workers (38 per cent), most of them in industry (Table 1). To these are added other, mainly female, occupations such as nursing assistants and childcare workers.
Table 1. Socio-economic Groups within the Working Class in Europe
| Skilled white-collar workers (7%) | Nursing assistants, childcare workers and home-care assistants | 7% |
| Small-scale self-employed workers (15%) | Farmers | 7% |
| Craftsmen | 8% | |
| Skilled manual workers (38%) | Skilled construction workers | 6% |
| Skilled craft or food and drink industry workers | 4% | |
| Workers in the metalwork and electronics industries | 12% | |
| Machine operators | 7% | |
| Drivers | 9% | |
| Unskilled manual workers and white-collar workers (40%) | Retail and service assistants | 19% |
| Manual labourers | 10% | |
| Cleaners | 9% | |
| Agricultural workers | 2% | |
| Total of working class | 100% |
Source: LFS 2014. Population: People in work aged between twenty-five and sixty-five, EU 27 (excluding Malta).
Over Europe as a whole, the proportion of self-employed workers – farmers and craftsmen – is fairly substantial. But this average masks wide disparities: in the regions of the East and South, being in paid work is far from the norm in all sectors, and a large number of the working class work for themselves. This situation contrasts strongly with that in France, the United Kingdom and Germany, for example, where the proportion of farmers is no more than 1 per cent.
But there should be no mistake: these small-scale self-employed workers have little in common with entrepreneurs who have several employees under their command. In most cases, they are sole craftsmen, sometimes supported by one or two employees: they are particularly exposed to the vagaries of the economy, and are in a weak position to borrow or to develop their enterprise. In Poland, four-fifths of farmers (around 2.8 million people) work on small farms (less than ten hectares) which earn them little (less than €3,000 per year). Such farms barely meet the needs of self-sufficiency, forcing both partners in the household to work on the land (mixed farming with cereals, sugar beet, potatoes, hay and pasture) and raise a few animals, while supplementing this income through other work.9 The situation is similar, or even more difficult, in Romania, where three-quarters of farms occupy less than one hectare. Very often, these self-employed workers have no protection, and live in real social insecurity. Despite pressure from the European Union to subsidise only large farms, the Romanian authorities, particularly the Social Democratic Party, attempt to support small agricultural units, bypassing European norms in order to allow many working-class households to subsist – and thus secure their electoral support.10
In Greece, many self-employed people work for only one employer. These quasi-employees are, however, still registered with the social-security system as self-employed, and thus assume all the risks associated with the vagaries of the economic situation: they have no right to redundancy pay, or to unemployment benefit if their contract is terminated. In Spain, those known as ‘autonomous workers’ have gradually been granted social rights similar to those of employees, but they have been hit much harder by the economic crisis. In some sectors, such as transport, the self-employed lorry driver has to constantly increase his working hours in order to maintain his income, exposing him to the risk of legal sanction.11 The result is permanent state of competition between self-employed and employed drivers, enabling the large haulage companies to eliminate all possibility of collective action.
Increasing competition can also be seen among employed working-class people, where the proportion of manual workers remains high, particularly in industry. This preponderance of manual work nevertheless has a new geographical distribution: many industrial jobs have been relocated from Western Europe to the margins, in the East and South. Poland offers a typical example. After it joined the European Union in 2004, the country became host to the factories of major electronics and white-goods manufacturers, mainly in the Warsaw region and in the south of the country. American computer manufacturer Dell, for example, closed its production site at Limerick, in Ireland, transferring it in January 2008 to a new plant in Łódź, Poland’s third city. Poland has also become the largest manufacturer of flat screens in Europe. More recently, in January 2017, the Whirlpool group announced its decision to close its tumble-dryer plant in Amiens, in France, and relocate it to Poland, despite having received subsidies to modernise the French site. For the last twenty years these movements have contributed, bit by bit, to altering the profile of the working class in Europe.
Beyond the division between the self-employed and wage earners, what the working class has in common is that it is the group most exposed to international competition, through both migration and relocation.
THE MAP OF THE WORKING CLASS IN EUROPE
The new distribution of production in Europe means that the relative proportion of the working class is far from uniform throughout the countries of the European Union. In broad outline, a contrast can once again be drawn between a Europe of the South and East, including the Baltic states, where the working class forms the largest proportion of the population, and a Europe of the North and West, where the middle class comprises a substantial share.
In one group of countries, then, the working class is predominant among people in work. This group comprises the southern periphery (Portugal, Spain, Greece) and the central and eastern periphery (the former socialist countries) of Europe (see Map 1). In these countries, the proportion of working-class people is higher than the European average (43 per cent), and considerably greater than that of other social classes.12 In Romania they make up as much as two-thirds of the working population. Italy, Cyprus and Austria have a similar class structure: the proportion of working-class people is slightly above the European
