Collective Bargaining

After a two-hour work stoppage earlier this month, port workers went on a 24-hour strike to protest the long delay in reaching an agreement with their employers over renewal of their collective agreement that expired 31 December 2017. Furthermore, unions claim that port managers misinterpret salary provisions as they were agreed in the current collective agreement and also fail to hire workers in line with the current collective agreement. The 24-hour strike was called out by workers in response to a decision of the dispute resolution council that declared that the announced strike would be illegal. Union Peo supported the 24-hour strike while the Sek union asked its workers to not participate in the industrial action as it was declared illegal by the council. However, their members also participated in the strike.

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The minimum retirement age will this year be raised by 3 months. With implementation of the increase that was approved by parliament in 2017 the new minimum retirement age will be 63 years and 6 months. Further increases in the minimum pension age are to be expected in the near future as the population is ageing. The retirement age has been steadily going up, a decade ago the minimum retirement age was just under 60 years.

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More than 7000 health service staff will be balloted for strike action in the new year over a 17 million euro wage dispute. Trade union Siptu said the decision stems from a government refusal to pay an increase in wages. According to the union the government has failed to give pay rises to workers such as surgical instrument technicians and lab staff in line with recommendations from independent job evaluations. The union said that some are underpaid by up to 6000 euro a year. Earlier this month, the vast majority of nurses and midwives with the Irish Nurses and Midwives Association voted to go on strike in a dispute over pay and staff shortages.

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The Independent Union of Airline Passenger Cabin Crew (Sitcpla) and the Workers' Trade Union (USO) have given an ultimatum to airline Ryanair. If no agreement is reached, the unions threaten with 3-days of strike action in January 2019. The unions demand better working conditions and want Ryanair to employ their Spanish-based staff under local labour contracts instead of the Irish contracts that Ryanair uses. Spain is Ryanair's third biggest market. The airline has 13 of its 89 bases in the country.

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Ryanair is still not respecting union rights and labour laws of the countries they operate in. This month Ryanair has sacked all pilots and cabin crew in the Netherlands after they refused to re-locate to bases such as Morocco and Belarus and organised themselves in trade union FNV. The Dutch governmental institution on unemployment benefits however did not grant them permission for the collective firing of the workers. Spanish cabin crew staff is in the middle of disagreement about pay and working conditions and announced multiple strike actions for January 2019. Spanish unions are urging Ryanair to respect Spanish legislation and employ their workers in Spain under national labour laws. A year after Ryanair announced it would recognise unions, the company still has a long way to go before it can be considered a fair employer, states the International Transport Workers Association (ITF). The ITF and European Transport Workers’ Federation (ETF) have published a report examining the progress the airline has made and what remains to be done. The report acknowledges that Ryanair workers have won improvements in some areas, but shows that many of the issues which led to repeated industrial action over the summer have not been resolved.

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After years of austerity and wage cuts the country is expected to see an increase of the national minimum wage. The cabinet still has to formally decide upon the wage increase and the precise number on 15 January 2019 but experts believe that the minimum wage will be increased with 5% to 8%. The new minimum wage will also apply to young workers and they will see the highest rise in income as currently they are paid only a sub-minimum wage especially designed for workers up to 25 years of age. An estimated 400,000 workers receive the minimum salary every month. Besides them and many flexible workers also the unemployed will benefit from an increased minimum wage as benefits are based on the minimum wage level.

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Despite temperatures well below zero thousands of people took to the streets in protest of an amendment to the Labour Code that allows for employers to demand 400 hours of overtime that was passed in parliament. This so called ‘slave law’ does not only almost doubles the amount of overtime that an employer can demand of his or her employees but also states that payment for this overtime can be delayed by up to three years. Opposition parties and trade unions announced more actions coming next month. Massive demonstrations such as these are a rare sight in the country under the current presidency.

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During the month cleaners at Luton Airport engaged in industrial action over a wage dispute. Part of the industrial action was a 2 week-long strike that also covered the Christmas days. The cleaners union Unite points out that while the company makes a yearly profit of nearly 40 million pounds it is not willing to pay their cleaners the real living wage. The company said that it had offered staff a 9% increase over three years but according to at that rate cleaners at Luton Airport still won't be earning a real living wage in 2021.

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After earlier strike actions at the supermarket chain stores (see our September and November newsletters) trade union Verdi called out a two-day warning strike just before Christmas... Until the end of May, Real still had a collective agreement with trade union Verdi but then the company decided to go a different path and cut employment costs by abandoning the collective agreement they had with union Verdi.

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After 40 days of strike by the stevedores their union SEAL and the port administration finally reached an agreement that put an end to the strike. One of the main problems of the workers was the lack of job security and formal contracts, workers were usually just hired for one day’s work. Union and management have agreed to 56 casual workers being offered contracts by the stevedoring companies, and a further 10 to 37 being offered the same in the near future. The strike has blocked a total of over 20.000 cars from a nearby Volkswagen plant. Volkswagen had no alternative route for transporting the cars and is believed to have put pressure on the port management to come to an agreement that would end the strike.

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