Collective Bargaining

Prison officers from the prisons and remand centres from across the country staged a protest on 29 January 2018 in demand of higher wages and better working conditions. They were backed by a statement from their colleagues from the Court Guard unit, and several interior ministry officers who were off duty and joined the protest. A spokesperson from the trade union of the prison staff explained that the demands of the workers remain unchanged: 20% pay rise and equalising the remunerations with the size of the remuneration of their colleagues from the interior ministry, the State Agency for National Security and ministry of defence. Other demands include improvement of the working conditions and appointment of more staff to fill in the vacancies and new positions to be added to the staff complement.

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A labour court in Geneva has ruled against a subcontractor that underpaid its posted workers active on a Geneva building site. The workers earned 8 euro an hour, about a third of what the work warranted, the court said. The case was led by the trade union UNIA on behalf of the workers and has been ongoing for almost five years. The reason for the delay and difficulty of the case is that the subcontractor turned out to be a type of ‘phantom-company’, impossible to pin down. The Polish company was subcontracted by a German principal contractor for the building work; however, according to Swiss law covering posted workers, the primary company can only be prosecuted once all avenues of chasing down the subcontractor are exhausted. In this case, UNIA explained, the workers would need to obtain a court order from the Polish justice system before returning and possibly launching a case in Germany.

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Construction firm Carillion’s, which managed hundreds of public sector projects and vital public services, collapsed into liquidation after last-ditch rescue talks failed. The collapse has caused fears for the many companies and workers that relied on it for business. The company went into compulsory liquidation with debts of £1.3bn, a pension deficit of nearly £1bn and a host of unfinished public contracts. Payments to those receiving pensions from the firm are expected to continue, albeit at a reduced rate. The Unite trade union called for an urgent inquiry into Carillion’s collapse and expressed concern about the impact on the wider supply chain, warning that many small firms were now at serious risk of collapse. Trade union GMB stated that workers are paying the price for the failures of corporate bosses and government ministers.

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The Institute of Economic and Social Research (WSI) at the Hans Böckler Foundation published a report on the compliance with the statutory minimum wage. The authors reveal that around 2.7 million workers received less than the minimum wage in 2016 even though they were entitled to it. This comes up to 9,8% of people who are entitled to receive it after the minimum wage law that came into force in 2015. The highest rates of avoidance by employers are found in private households (42,6%), hotel and catering industry (38,0%) and retail (19,5%). Companies without workers' councils and collective labour agreements more frequently undermined the minimum wage. In such companies, 18.6% of employees did not receive the legally prescribed minimum wage. By comparison, 3.2% of companies with workers' councils and collective labour agreements circumvented the payment of the minimum wage in 2016.

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Unemployed people who don't find work or enter training schemes will face a 4.65 percent cut in their benefit payments. Some 130,000 people have signed a citizens' initiative demanding the cessation of the activation programme that sanctions unemployed benefit claimants who fail to perform 18 hours of paid work over a three-month period, or enter job-related training. Trade union confederation SAK and several unions are organising a major demonstration on Friday 2 February 2018. The unions will gather for a protest in Helsinki against the so-called 'active model'. The board of the Industrial Union decided to join the protest with a strike against the government’s new measures. The strike will affect every shift in the affected sectors.

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Almost 7,000 health and social care workers in bodies funded by the Department of Health have voted overwhelmingly to take strike action over the failure to restore their pay cuts in line with public servants. The health workers are contracted through bodies known as Section 39 organisations, funded by the Department of Health, but workers are not deemed to be public servants. SIPTU said that that 97% of staff balloted had backed strike action, which will begin with a one-day stoppage on 14 February. The turnout was 85%. The dispute centres on around 12,000 workers in, of whom SIPTU represents around 7,000.

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Deliveroo workers in five cities (and in Amsterdam – the Netherlands) started a strike, after Deliveroo refused to delay its decision to treat all workers as self-employed from 1 February 2018. The strike was being led by a collective representing about 200 couriers. Shortly after, talks were announced in a trade union press statement. The workers said that the multinational cannot simply impose precarious employment status upon its workers solely under the pretext of its operating via the internet, and by taking an aloof attitude to the issue.

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The IG Metall metalworkers' trade union announced that it will intensify its campaign for better pay and conditions, threatening 24-hour ‘warning strikes’ after talks with employers’ representatives fell apart. Production by the country's crucial metal and electrical engineering industries may be affected in the coming weeks by the walkouts after the latest round of negotiations ended without a deal. The main sticking point remains the demands for workers to have the option of a 28-hour week, with employers making up some compensation of the salary loss.

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The French group Carrefour has announced a restructuring resulting in a cutting of jobs for 1.233 people in Belgium and 2.400 in France and at their international headquarters. The group called the transformation plan ‘Carrefour 2022’ and said to understand the impact these cuts will have on the lives of their employees. Carrefour stated that they would do their utmost to limit the societal consequences. Carrefour Belgium wants to reassess its 44 integrated hypermarkets’ efficiency: three will be turned into a supermarket formula (Westerlo, Bruges Sint-Kruis and Haine-Saint-Pierre). The restructuring plan will contain two store closures (hypermarkets in Genk and Angleur) and job cuts at the main office in Evere. The workers reacted with strike action against the company’s restructuring plan. The trade unions were not calling for a strike, but they support the action as a signal to the management.

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A metal worker strike of some 130,000 workers at 179 workplaces across the sector, including all major multinational companies, scheduled to begin on 2 February 2018, was banned by the government on the grounds of being ‘prejudicial to national security’. The strike was announced as a result of the dispute over the failed sectoral-level negotiations between the three unions representing metal workers and the Metal Industry Employers’ Association, MESS. The strike was banned by government decree, announced in the Official Gazette on 26 January 2018 after being signed by the President, Prime Minister and all cabinet ministers on 24 January. The decree specifies the 179 workplaces where strike action is banned, including sites owned by multinationals such as ThyssenKrupp, Bosch, Ford, Mercedes Benz, Renault and Siemens.

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