Collective Bargaining

Public workers in hospitals, schools and rubbish collection went on a nationwide strike on 14-15 February 2019 demanding the government to raise wages in the public sector. The government promised to increase the salaries of the lowest paid workers in 2019 but unions say the pay of around 600.000 public sector staff has been frozen for the last 10 years. Nurses were already holding strategic strike actions that prevented many operations from the beginning of the months. The nurses went on strike in demand of better pay and working conditions and have ignored a government order to get back to work. The leader of one of the main nurses’ unions even started a hunger strike after prosecutors declared the three-week-long walkout by surgical nurses unlawful and threatened to impose penalties on those still taking part. FENPROF, FNE and eight other education trade unions also joined the national public sector strike. The teachers went on strike to protest the Government's decision to recover only 2 years, 9 months and 18 days of the frozen service time for teachers. A large national demonstration of teachers and educators is scheduled on 23 March 2019 in Lisbon.

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After an earlier strike in nursey and elementary schools, teachers organised a nationwide strike demanding a rise in purchasing power and in protest if a new education bill that was voted through parliament in February 2019. Some 40% of the countries’ teachers are believed to have participated in the action. Part of the new education bill is to increase compulsory education with 3 years without allocating additional funding for schools. Another mobilizing factor was the public service reform project. It provides for increased recourse to contract workers, greater individualisation of remuneration, and measures to "promote mobility" of staff, which are part of the objective of reducing the number of staff by 120,000 by 2022.

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The Federal Labour Court (BAG) in Erfurt declares that employers must notify their employees to take their holidays and also point out that these days will lapse if not taken in due time. The court ruled that vacation days may not simply expire, if workers have not been warned in time they can claim their vacation days later. The European Court of Justice (ECJ) had ruled in November 2018 that employers must expressly warn their employees against the expiry of their leave. With the Federal Court ruling, European law is now integrated into German law.

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Workers at Athens Urban Train ISAP organised a 3-hour work stoppage in demand of the signing of a new collective agreement and the hiring of permanent personnel. With this industrial action they also want to draw attention to permanent problems like delays in the ticket issue and shortages in spare parts that leads to decrease of schedules.

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Around 500 supervisors on community employment schemes organised a strike action at six locations in the country. According to the supervisors and their unions Fórsa and SIPTU the strike follows a ten-year dispute over pension entitlements. Forsa and SIPTU say over 250 supervisors have retired with no occupational pension since a 2008 Labour Court recommendation. The 1250 current staff also don’t have access to an employer sponsored occupational pension scheme, despite Labour Court recommendations. With the strike action unions demand a decent pension scheme for the community employment supervisors.

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The union representing local authority workers, POE-OTA, has called a 24-hour strike. The union demands that workers with hazardous jobs get paid a corresponding bonus. The union is also protesting against recent privatizations and urges the public nature of services to be safeguarded.

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A planned strike of Postal workers at Pošta Slovenije has been cancelled when the two trade unions representing Pošta Slovenije workers and the management of the national postal company have managed to reach a deal on the employees' strike demands. Part of the new deal is an agreement on the payment of overtime, which, due to the personnel shortage, was one of the more urgent requirements of both trade unions. To tackle the work load that is caused by the personnel shortages management promised to increase the number of employees.

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A new study was published that measures the employers' coverage and the impact of the representativeness of the branches on these companies. Measuring the employer audience also makes it possible to determine the coverage rate of employers' organizations in a given branch. This kind of systematic measurement of the audience of employers 'organizations at the national, inter-professional and professional levels was set up for the first time in 2017. The study shows that one in four companies, on average, are members of an employers' organization while two out of three employees work in these companies. In general, it is in sectors where employment is highly concentrated around a few large companies that employee coverage rates are high. Furthermore it appears that conventional wages are slightly higher in the branches where the employers coverage is high

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Public sector trade unions called out a national strike for 15 February 2019 in order to demand higher wages. The unions are angry with the government’s lack of proposals to raise salaries in the public sector. The government proposed to raise salaries for the public service from 580 euro a month in 2019 to 635.07 euro a month in 2019 but unions demand a bigger increase in wages. The salary increase in 2019 is expected to cover around 70.000 civil servants and could cost 50 million euro.

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The right to strike has often been restricted for public service workers and in recent years has come frequently under attack. Making use of 35 country factsheets provided by the ETUI, EPSU has published an extensive article that covers recent challenges to the right to strike, an analysis of which workers are denied the right to strike, the restrictions related to essential and minimum services, government action to prevent or suspend strike action in the public sector and procedural barriers to exercising the right to strike.

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