Notes that the gender pay gap remains one of the major issues in relation to the gender gap in the ICT sector, and calls, therefore, on the Member States to finally start actively implementing the Commission Recommendation on strengthening the principle of equal pay between men and women through transparency and continued positive action, preferably by means of legislation, and to introduce wage transparency measures and gender-neutral job evaluations; calls on the Commission to address equal pay in its 2016 work programme initiative ...[+++] ‘New Start for working parents’, as the pay gap increases even further when people become parents.

53. Reiterates its call on the Member States to adopt measures favourable to job creation as part of their social investment programmes, such as introducing labour-related tax reforms incentivising employment, promoting and supporting self-employment and business start-ups, improving the framework for doing business and facilitating access to financing for SMEs, transforming informal and undeclared work into regular employment, creating incentives to improve the employment level of the most vulnerable social groups, reforming labour markets in order to make them more dynamic and non-discriminatory, and integrating flexicurity and moderni ...[+++]sing wage-setting systems in order to align wages with productivity developments;

11. Calls on the Member States to adopt measures favourable to job creation such as labour tax reforms that encourage employment, promote and support genuine and voluntary self-employment and business start-ups, improve the framework for doing business and facilitate the access to financing for SMEs, transform informal and undeclared work into regular employment, reform labour markets, if necessary, to make them more adaptive, dynamic, competitive and inclusive while ensuring adequate security for employees, provide employers and employees with skills and instruments that enable them to adapt to changing labour markets needs, modernise w ...[+++]age-setting systems - within the framework of social dialogue with the active participation of the social partners, while respecting the diversity of national models of industrial relations - to align wages with productivity trends within the boundaries of decent living wages, and exploit the high employment potential of sectors such as the green economy, health and social care, and the ICT sector to create sustainable and quality jobs;

19. Stresses that Europe now needs to accept real wage growth that compensates for productivity increases and inflation and also embarks on a redistribution aimed at increasing the wage share in Gross National Income; reminds the ECB, the Commission and the Council that the Great Depression of the 1930s only took a firm grip when employers started to cut wages and the crisis jumped over from the financial market to the goods and services market;

– (ES) Madam President, Commissioner, before I start my speech I would like to inform Mr Bouwman that the company he was referring to is the Sintel company, which went bankrupt, forcing unemployment on a large number of its employees. However, several months ago the Spanish Government took on the responsibility of making backdated wage payments to Sintel’s employees, relocating or finding other such solutions for all those affected.

It is as simple as that. That means that some countries should also consider whether, slowly but surely, they should start introducing minimum wages and minimum standards, for otherwise these areas would be difficult to verify.