Oliver De Schutter proposes ways of tackling the burn-out epidemic

Year-on-year, the well-being of Luxembourg workers is deteriorating, as the latest survey by the lobby group for employees, Chambre des Salariés (CSL), indicated last month.

The CSL report drew a bleak picture of the quality of working life for employees in the Grand Duchy, with half of staff surveyed in Luxembourg experiencing “high levels” of mental distress at work last year.

Olivier De Schutter, the UN special rapporteur on human rights and extreme poverty, will address what he describes as a “burnout epidemic” in a lecture in Luxembourg on Thursday.

De Schutter, a professor of law at UCLouvain and Sciences Po Paris, draws a link between the significant increase in the number of employees and changes in the world of work. “These are characterised by growing insecurity for employees, with increasing difficulty in reconciling their professional and personal lives,” he said.

Precarious contracts, inequality and insecurity

In his report submitted to the UN, the labour specialist focuses on two developments: increasing inequality and economic insecurity.

“Inequality leads to comparisons with one’s neighbours, anxiety, fear of social downgrading and a weakening of social ties,” he said. Instead of creating and nurturing a network of solidarity, De Schutter argues, workers become more competitive for fear of falling down the social ladder.

More generally, employees have to contend with the threat of job insecurity. “People are very uncertain about their professional future”, he said, due to various factors, rooted in increasing globalisation.

The automation of tasks, now accelerated by artificial intelligence, is also a driver of the casualisation of work. “More and more jobs can be replaced by robots or machines. Workers are afraid of becoming redundant,” said De Schutter, who will speak at the CSL headquarters on rue Pierre Hentges on Thursday. The lecture will be given in French, with a German translation available.

Another major concern for workers is that companies are increasingly outsourcing tasks that were not outsourced in the past, such as accounting, transport and security. “These tasks are delegated to subcontractors who employ short-term, insecure contracts, subject to supply and demand,” he said.

A vicious circle

In this context, the meritocratic approach intrinsically linked to work can weigh heavily on employee morale. “The more a society, such as Western society, has a meritocratic approach to work, the more people who fail will tell themselves that they are responsible, that they are not deserving enough, that they have no talent. We make them responsible for their poverty, and these people internalise this negative image themselves, and they end up blaming themselves for not succeeding like others,” De Schutter said.

Olivier De Schutter has been the UN special rapporteur on human rights and extreme poverty since 2020, and a member of the European Committee of Social Rights since 2025 © Photo credit: Pierre Matgé

Paradoxically, the value placed on work is closely linked to market demand, and not to the social usefulness of the profession performed. As the Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted, the “essential” professions are not particularly valued after all.

A study by the International Labour Organisation showed that people working in these occupations were paid 26% less than so-called non-essential occupations. This gap is rooted in sexism, De Schutter believes. “Teaching and health are historically female professions. We are in the process of confronting this legacy of undervaluing traditionally female professions,” he said.

A vicious circle can then be set in motion. Difficult working conditions give rise to depression and anxiety, which have a negative impact on workers’ productivity, leading to a deterioration in their professional situation.

“A real taboo still surrounds mental health at work,” De Schutter said. “People are afraid to talk about it. It’s a stigma. So they delay seeking help, and develop increasingly unpredictable and disruptive behaviours in the workplace.”

Potential solutions

At the same time, the world of work is pushing employees towards ever greater autonomy. This is deceptive, according to the professor, “because it is accompanied by a disciplinary approach to individual assessment”.

Workers are constantly pitted against each other, each trying to do better than the next. The pressure to perform becomes considerable, and as a result, De Schutter observes, people tend to “burn out, because they never stop trying to improve their performance.”

De Schutter has a few suggestions for steps he believes lawmakers could take to turn the tide.

“We could legislate so that employers no longer impose flexible working hours. This is one of the main causes of the increase in depression and anxiety in countries like the United States, where 54% of workers do not know when they are going to work in the next two weeks,” he said.

The UN rapporteur also argues in favour of supporting the social economy, which has objectives other than immediate financial profitability, and breaking away from an obsession with GDP growth.

“My appeal is to economists to get down to work so that we have a model for a post-growth society to free these workers who are in the throes of exhaustion,” he said.

(This article was originally published by Virgule. Translation and editing by John Monaghan.)