Collective Bargaining

The Labour Ministry will launch an employment protection fund, similar to the Kurzarbeit schemes in Germany and Austria. Implementation of the scheme is scheduled for January 2022 to ensure there is enough time to prepare this new labour market instrument. The new fund must protect employers and employees from unforeseeable temporary external factors. The fund will make short time working easier in the future by granting workers 80% of their net salary, with 60% of their original net salary to be covered by the fund and 20% coming from the employer.

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The government will not give healthcare workers a structural wage increase, because of a lack of money and the economic uncertainty of the moment. The Health Care Minister argues that wages recently grew with the market and agreements for further increases had already been made. The already promised € 1,000 bonus will be paid later as a token of the appreciation for their hard work during the Coronavirus crisis.

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According to data published by the Central Statistical Office (GUS), employment dropped by 2.3% in July 2020 in year-on-year terms. Average wages in the private sector had increased by 3.8% from June. The average gross monthly wage in July was € 1,229, according to GUS.

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People on unemployment will be permitted to enter academic programmes without losing their benefits. This is among the changes to current law being developed by a working group appointed by the Minister for Social Affairs. The changes are intended to benefit the long-term unemployed, among others.

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The management board of Lufthansa’s (LHAG.DE) unit Austrian Airlines will hand back their recent bonuses after Finance minister informed that payments were “unacceptable” for a company that is being bailed out. The government agreed in June to pay the airline €450 million in grants and loans as it reeled from a collapse in air travel because of the coronavirus pandemic.

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The government announced that DKK 3 billion (€ 400 million) worth of additional taxes will be levied to fund early retirement for certain categories of workers. The government’s plan includes a targeted corporate tax on banks and pension funds and higher levies for the most wealthy investors on their stock market returns. The right to early retirement will be granted to citizens who carry out particularly arduous lines of work.

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The government decided to increase the lowest wages for academic personnel from 1 September 2020. According to amendments developed by the Education and Science Ministry (IZM), based on the schedule for wage increases, the lowest monthly wage rate for lecturers as of 1 September 2020 is € 805, which is the landmark for other wage rates, is set equal or close to minimal teacher’s rate. At the same time, it is planned to increase wage rates for other university and college workers.

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Full-time employees in Austria work the second longest in the EU only topped by Greece, which is partly due to many hours of overtime. Of these hours of overtime roughly a fifth is unpaid, equalling an average of €10,000 per person. According to the ÖGB (Austrian Trade Union Federation), long and stressful work has adverse effects on the employees’ physical wellbeing and intelligence. Therefore, the abundance of work should be distributed more equally.

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Schoolteachers in Italy earn less than in many other EU countries. A new petition hopes to raise public awareness before key negotiations about pay rises for state functionaries with the government in September 2017. The call to action on online activism site “change.org” argues that Italian primary and secondary school teachers are employed under "precarious" temporary contracts and have worse working conditions than their EU equivalents.

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The government’s Employment Agency reported that the unemployment rate edged down by 0.4 percentage points month-on-month to 7.9% in July. On an annual comparison basis, the registered unemployment rate rose by 2.6 percentage points in the month under review.

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