Collective Bargaining

Trade unions initiated one of the largest teacher gatherings ever organised, with up to a thousand educators participating. The conference in Liège heard teacher after teacher describe how difficult the profession has become. Their views were aired at a study day on ‘Teaching, an increasingly difficult job’, organised by a trade union common front, including the Centrale générale des services publics–Enseignement (CGSP-FGTB), the Confédération des Syndicats Chrétiens de l’Enseignement (CSC-Enseignement) and the Syndicat Libre de la Fonction Publique (SLFP). The event aimed to both take stock of how the difficulties of the teaching profession impact staff health and to identify possible solutions.

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Retail workers trade union Mandate has initiated a petition campaign to make an end to insecure work. The union launched the ‘Secure Hours – Better Future’ charter which would end zero hours and ‘If and When’ contracts. Mandate said that tens of thousands of workers have no security over their income and do not know from week to week what hours they will be working. Two authors of the University of Limerick Report ‘A Study on the Prevalence of Zero Hours Contracts among Irish Employers and their Impact on Employees’ addressed the launch of the charter that also asks for an improvement of the calculation systematic of working hours and a decent ‘band of hours’ into which a worker is placed.

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The continuing disputes at Ryanair and the central management have entered a new phase. Ryanair Holdings made the company Europe’s most valuable airline by being cheap, right down by even charging pilots for coffee on their own flights. Many crew members are employed as contractors on a month-to-month basis and must pay for uniforms, mobile phone use, ground transport and hotel costs when working from other bases as well as other costs typically covered by an airline. Now the workers are pushing back and seek direct negotiations with the company management. They are demanding more pay, better conditions and the ability to bargain collectively across Europe. However, observers note that most of the shareholders would rather Ryanair stop flying any planes for six months than having the workforce unionised.

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The Global Wealth Report 2017 and an accompanying data, published by Credit Suisse, reveal that the average household is 35% richer than it was at the turn of the century, but there has been no reduction in wealth inequality. The country has achieved no reduction in wealth inequality since the year 2000, the only country among those with developed economies not to do so. A combination of high average wealth and relatively high wealth inequality results in a large proportion of the Swiss population being in the upper echelons of the global distribution. Switzerland accounts for 1.7% of the top 1% of global wealth holders, which is remarkable for a country with just 0.1% of the world’s population.

Read on: in English … The data, in English …

The Central Arbitration Committee, a body that resolves worker disputes, said in a key legal ruling that the food delivery Deliveroo riders were self-employed contractors as they had the right to allocate a substitute to do the work for them. By law, anyone with the right to do this is classed as self-employed, and self-employed workers aren’t entitled to collective bargaining rights. As a consequence, riders are not entitled to basic employment rights because they are not ‘workers’. The case was brought by the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain (IWGB) to force the firm to accept the collective bargaining rights of its members.

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A representative sample of 1,522 employees took part in the fifth national survey on the quality of work. The results show that 72% of the respondents said they have an ‘average’ or ‘high’ quality of work; an increase compared to 2016 (68%). However, the outcome is quite unequal if the results are analysed per sector or per different aspect. For instance, satisfaction with pay has decreased. Also, the workers possibility to influence companies’ decisions is on the decrease. The work-life balance is worsening and respondents report on increased work pressure. For the first time the survey looks at the impact of digitalisation, which affects 89% of employees, whilst 7% is afraid of losing their job because of digitalisation within the next ten years.

Read on: in English … The Webpage with the reports, in German and French …

According to the Teachers’ Union (ZNP), some 6,500 teachers have lost their jobs as a result of the education reform, which the government launched amid protests. The union said that a further 12,700 teachers have seen their working hours cut and pay reduced, and 5,300 have been forced to work in several schools to keep their income from shrinking. These figures were denied by the government. The education ministry stated that one of the objectives of the government’s education reform was to protect teachers' positions and that any loss of jobs in schools has been a result of demographic trends. ZNP arguments that the worst is still ahead; some 35,000 teachers and school administration employees may still lose their jobs over the next three years as a result of the reform.

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The annually-published Hays Global Skills Index shows that Denmark’s score in terms of the gap between available jobs and the number of people to fill them had increased from 5.8 to 6.4 from 2016 to 2017, while the average of the 33 countries mentioned in the index fell from 5.4 to 5.3. The index score of 1-10 is based on seven indicators: education flexibility, labour market participation, labour market flexibility, talent mismatch, overall wage pressure, wage pressure in high-skill industries and wage pressure in high-skill jobs.

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A rail strike that threatened to affect football fans travelling to a World Cup play-off match has been suspended. Staff at the railway network Iarnród Éireann had planned to go on strike as part of an ongoing dispute. The date clashed with the national team's play-off tie against Denmark. Earlier strikes have brought train services to a halt twice since 1 November. Iarnród Éireann staff demands a 3.75% pay rise, which the company has argued it cannot afford as it is already financially vulnerable. The Labour Court is involved in talks and has recommended that staff should receive pay increases worth 2.5% per year for the next three years as well as a once-off ‘goodwill’ gesture voucher worth 500 euro. A ballot is planned.

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The employment situation is still improving in the country. In the first nine months of 2017 (compared with the same period of 2016) the employment increased, for instance, in sale and repair of motor vehicles by 8.4%, in food and beverage service activities by 8% and in accommodation by 7.3%. The monthly wage increase was on average the highest in food and beverage service activities (8.9%, reaching 429 euro), retail trade (7.5% - 670 euro), transportation and storage (7.3% - 895 euro), industry (4.7% - 1,017 euro), sale and repair of motor vehicles (4.6% - 959 euro). Meanwhile, a total of 45,900 foreigners were officially working in Slovakia at the end of September 2017. Compared to the same date in 2016, this means an increase of 12,700 people. Workers are coming from Serbia, Romania and the Czech Republic. Every fourth labour migrant is working in the district of the capital Bratislava.

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