Collective Bargaining

The Confederation of Swedish Enterprise and the Swedish Trade Union Confederation (LO) have reached an agreement in principle to make it easier for refugees and long-term unemployed to find jobs. If the deal is approved, depending on acceptance by the affiliates and the state, the employee will be paid the equivalent of the normal collectively agreed minimum wage after tax, but the employer will pay only 8,000 kronor (809 euro) while the rest will be covered by the state. The new employment form would be available for newly arrived who have been granted residence permit in the past 36 months, young people under 25 who have been unemployed for at least six months and people over 25 who have been unemployed for more than a year. During the contract, which can last up to two years, the employees have the right to study Swedish during working hours without having their salaries docked. After two years, the employment should be turned into a rolling contract.

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A panel data analysis of 18 OECD countries between 1970 and 2007 examined the extent to which the relationship between the knowledge economy and income inequality is influenced by national labour market institutions. The authors found that the expansion of knowledge employment is positively associated with both the 90–10 wage ratio and the income share of the top 1%, but that these effects are mitigated by the presence of strong labour market institutions, such as coordinated wage bargaining, strict employment protection legislation and high bargaining coverage. The study provides robust evidence against the argument that industrial relations systems are no longer important safeguards of wage solidarity in the knowledge economy.

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The temporary agency sector expects that more than 1.08 million temporary work contracts will be signed in the three months from November 2017 to January 2018, an increase of 14.7% compared to the same period in 2016. The Adecco group published regional and sectoral data that refer to longer contracts, with the majority of contracts in the consumer goods sector, customer service and sales. Hiring is also expected to pick up in the logistics and transport sector, banking, retail, food, hospitality and distribution.

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After four years of debate, the Jura cantonal parliament voted to adopt a minimum hourly wage of 20 Swiss francs (17 euro). This brings the canton a step closer to realising a project that started in 2013 when the citizens of the Jura voted in favour of an initiative proposing a minimum wage. Jura is the second canton in the country to adopt a minimum wage after Neuchâtel settled in 2013 on 20 francs an hour. The Neuchâtel decision was held up by litigation after it was challenged in the country’s highest court by a group of private organisations and individuals. In August 2017, the Federal Court rejected the challenge, saying a 20-franc minimum wage conformed to federal law.

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The bargaining partners in the telecom-sector, the employer organisation Assotelecomunicazioni-Asstel and the trade unions Slc-Cgil, Fistel-Cisl and Uilcom-Uil, signed a transitional agreement for the sector. The deal includes a continuation of some provisions of the existing collective agreement until 30 June 2018. The agreement has set out the procedure for the next bargaining round; the unions will have to table their proposals before 31 March 2018. The agreement has three wage related components: an average pay increase of 40 euro in two steps (on 1 January and 1 July 2018), an additional 10 euro on average monthly wage component, called an ‘Elemento Retributivo Separato’, and a 120-euro nominal welfare benefit in 2018.

The agreement: in Italian …

Pilots at Air France's budget airline Hop! have threatened to strike during the end-of-year holiday period if negotiations over working conditions remain blocked. The biggest union among Air France pilots, SNPL has voted in favour of striking if negotiations over the working conditions at its regional subsidiary company Hop! do not move forward. The ongoing debate between the management and Hop! pilots includes a dispute over working hours, particularly concerning whether pilots should be asked to work with less than ten hours of break between the last flight of the day and the first of the morning, known as the ‘short nights’ system.

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The trade unions at Amazon are demanding pay rises to match the company’s growth. They complain that workers find themselves forced to do mandatory overtime, to work night shifts or sometimes for six days without a break to keep up with increasing demand. Workers have called a strike over pay to coincide with the online shopping giant’s Black Friday sale. Workers at Amazon’s distribution centre in Castel San Giovanni in Piacenza, in the north of Italy, walked out for the whole of Friday 24 November. Workers also voted not to accept any overtime from now until after Christmas – which, along with the Black Friday promotion, is typically retailers’ busiest time of year.

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The trade unions at Volkswagen’s manufacturer Škoda Auto are threatening to go on strike, claiming that the company doesn’t show enough interest in its employees. The main criticism is on working time and working hours. In negotiations between the unions and the company’s management, the management wants to maintain weekend production, whilst the unions want to cut back on overtime work, claiming that the employees are working extra hours at the expense of their family life. The trade unions are not completely against overtime work, but it depends on how much the company is willing to pay. They also raised the problem of uneven salaries between plants in the Czech Republic and Germany.

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The country’s leading financial thinktank, the Institute for Fiscal Studies, has warned workers to expect an unprecedented two lost decades of earnings growth and many more years of austerity as a result of the marked slowdown in the economy announced in government budget. The Institute said in its post-budget analysis that forecasts slashing productivity, earnings and growth in every year until 2022 made ‘pretty grim reading’, and predicted that even by the middle of next decade, the public finances would still be in the red. The Institute has a special webpage with videos, graphs and other resources that detail the analysis.

Read on: in English (1) … in English (2) … The Institute’s Autumn Budget 2017 webpage, in English …

A draft 2018 Joint Employment Report by the European Commission, which uses data from 2016 and early 2017, reveals that income inequality has slightly decreased in the EU, after increasing in the aftermath of the crisis. The richest 20% of the population had a disposable income that was around five times higher than that of the poorest 20% in 2016, with large disparities across countries (and an increase in inequality in some). The persistence of relatively large income inequalities, often linked to unequal opportunities in access to education, training and social protection, and reflecting poor labour market outcomes, raises concerns in terms of fairness, social inclusion and sustainable growth. Spain, Greece, Bulgaria and Lithuania face a ‘critical situation in terms of income inequality’ according to the report.

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