Collective Bargaining

After ongoing negotiations on a new collective agreement for the construction sector, that have been ongoing this year, remained deadlocked multiple strike actions were organised. Around 3000 construction workers participated in industrial action in the south of the country and later on in Geneva to draw attention to unwanted changes in the industry. The workers protest the increase in temporary work contracts, the precarious job situation of older employees and perceived wage dumping because of sub-contracting. One of the other key issues is the retirement age of 60. In June 2018 some 18.000 people demonstrated in Zurich in demanding the government to keep the retirement age at 60.

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The public sector trade union ADEDY has called for a 24-hour strike on 14 November. The union wants to protest against ongoing privatisation and outsourcing. However, the main demand is an increase of wages and pensions. ADEDY also calls for the abolition of the so-called Katrougalos Law that recalculates pensions.

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The countries’ two biggest trade unions, FNV and CNV, are jointly calling on their members and sympathizers to come to Dam Square in Amsterdam on Saturday 10 November for a large demonstration against government policies. The unions urge the government that was intending to give billions of euro to multinationals in tax benefits, to pay decent wages in the public sector and to invest in a higher social standard. Since the plan for the abolition of dividend tax, which would give the multinationals more tax benefits, is now off the table the unions demand that the reserved money should end up with the people.

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Eurostat published data that indicate a downward trend in the share of persons at risk of poverty or social exclusion in the EU. However, still around 113 million people are in this situation. In 2017, 112.9 million people, or 22.5% of the population, in the European Union were at risk of poverty or social exclusion. This means that they were in at least one of the following three conditions: at risk of poverty after social transfers (income poverty), severely materially deprived or living in households with very low work intensity. After three consecutive increases between 2009 and 2012 to reach almost 25%, the proportion of persons at risk of poverty or social exclusion in the EU has since continuously decreased to 22.5% in 2017, 1.2 percentage points below its 2008 reference-point and 1 percentage point below the 2016 level.

The news release: in English …

After coming to the conclusion that the country’s work environment was developing negatively in 2017 the government appointed an expert committee tasked with turning around negative workplace environment. After thorough analysis the committee of experts has now come with 18 recommendations which all point to the fact that work environment measures should take into account the actual conditions in the workplaces. The inspection should give more advice to businesses and improve their targeting of businesses and trades that are known to have work environment issues and give higher fines when they discover misconducts. Trade union 3F does not believe that the recommendations will make much of a difference if more money is not allocated to the improvement of work.

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A survey carried out for the General Confederation of Greek Workers (GSEE) on the occasion of the centenary of its founding revealed that 9 in 10 employees in the private sector have faced worsening labour conditions in the years of the debt crisis. In the conducted poll 90% of the respondents said that they had suffered from reduced salaries, job insecurity and blows to their social insurance protection and working conditions in the past eight years. The trade union movement has called for reestablishment of collective agreements to safeguard workers’ rights as well as the increase of the minimum wage in the private sector. Another report has shed a light on the quality of the jobs that have been established in recent years. According to the official database ‘Ergani’ of the labour ministry, there was a positive balance of 288,369 more jobs during the first nine months of 2018. However, 53.02% of the new jobs were part-time positions.

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The government formulated a socially progressive 2019 budget plan that promises a spectacular repair of the wage decreases during the period of austerity. The cornerstone of a new partnership between the political parties that have formed a minority government is an agreement on the budget, which would include a package with socially oriented measures such as raising the minimum wage by 22%, the biggest increase in 40 years. The plans also foresee an improvement of the paternity leave. However, the budget has to pass both the parliament and the Senate, whilst approval at EU-level might also be very uncertain.

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The Confederation of Swedish Enterprise and trade union confederations joined forces and together formed a labour market council for the European Union. The council is an answer to the European Commission’s many recent legislative initiatives in the social policy field. With the newly formed council employers and trade unions want to work together to protect the Swedish model, that they say is more and more under pressure, and the position of collective bargaining in general. The council will meet four times a year.

The report: in English …

The ETUC study ‘Trade unions protecting self-employed workers’ offers a thorough overview of the current situation on self-employment in the countries of the European Union. Not only does this study provide facts and figures regarding prevalence of self-employment it also focusses on how the different EU countries deal with employees’ rights and collective bargaining for the self-employed. Finding include that union membership for the self-employed is mostly accepted but unions have found it much more difficult to undertake collective bargaining for their self-employed members than to recruit and organise them. Another important conclusion of the study is that self-employed workers across Europe lack sufficient access to social protection. Healthcare is the most accessible benefit for the self-employed, and unemployment benefit the least. Self-employed also stay behind when it comes to benefits for accidents at work and sickness. Even when the self-employed do have access to social benefits the level of support that is provided may be inadequate because they do not meet the conditions or their contributions in the past have been too low.

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An Eurofound report examines the development of real wages in the period 2000- 2017, and the effect that collectively agreed pay has had on actual pay outcomes in the European Union. Furthermore, the study examines if and how the relation between collectively agreed pay, labour productivity in real terms and the development of actual wages might be changing. The study finds that from an employees’ perspective wages per employee have grown more slowly than productivity since the beginning of the millennium and the gap has been widening. There has also been a growing wage drifts between collectively agreed pay and actual compensation which could mean that negotiated wages are less able to influence pay outcomes. However, the report concludes that while the role of collectively agreed pay may be changing it remains a crucial element of any bargaining system and is not so easily replaced by something else because changes in institutional structures come at a high cost.

Read on: in English … The report: in English …