Collective Bargaining

Trade union members at Irish Rail have announced five dates of 24-hour all out-strike action after talks between management and unions at the Workplace Relations Commission broke down. The unions stated that they were confronted with a refusal by management at the State transport company to address a reasonable pay claim by staff. Representatives and officials of the five involved trade unions in the Irish Rail Group of Unions met and finalised an agreed campaign of targeted industrial action. The five 24-hour work stoppages are planned to take place on 1, 7, 14, and 23 November, and 8 December 2017. After the strike announcement, the management of Irish Rail expressed its hope to find a way to resolve the dispute and avoid disruption to the travelling public.

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Investigate Europe, a group of experienced journalists, comes up with a critical publication that was originally published in the German Tagesspiegel. The subject is the price of deregulating labour markets. According to the authors, European Commissioners and finance ministers of the euro group have systematically dismantled or weakened collective bargaining agreements, fought against trade unions and, by doing so, promoted inequality and job insecurity. With slogans as ‘employment-friendly reforms’ and ‘flexibility’, a decrease of the bargaining coverage or the extension of collective agreements was promoted.

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According to court documents, two of the country’s biggest food companies have been implicated in labour abuses of migrant workers picking tomatoes bought by thousands of European consumers every week. Prosecutor Paola Guglielmi named food giants Mutti and Conserve Italia as benefiting from ‘conditions of absolute exploitation’ in the country’s hugely lucrative tomato industry, as part of an investigation into the death of a seasonal labourer. Through a far-reaching investigation, the prosecutor checked telephone records, tapped phone calls and conducted aerial surveillance to link the exploitation of seasonal migrant workers to industrial giants. While workers make an average of €30 a day in the Puglia region, they can expect to lose up to half of that just to pay for food, transport, water and a cut to their gangmaster. A trade union spokesperson said that, next to transparency, stricter rules are necessary for the control of suppliers.

Read on: in English … Details, in Italian …

Due to the gender wage gap, women across Europe will effectively be working without pay for a large portion of the year. According to data compiled from Eurostat on the gender wage gap, Iceland is in the top ten percentiles for largest gender wage gaps. Estonia ranked first, with women in that country effectively working without pay from September 23, with a gender wage gap of about 27%. Women in Iceland, where the gender wage gap is about 17.5%, will effectively work without pay from October 30. It bears mentioning that, according to Statistics Iceland, the gender wage gap is 16.1% in 2016, down from 17% in 2015.

Read on: in English … The Statistics Iceland graphs and data, in English …

The finance minister said at an economic summit not to expect increased fiscal risks from a planned hike of public sector salaries and pensions. The increase is covered ‘with what has been achieved so far’ - which could be the basis for one-off hikes in 2017, as well as a higher base for growth in 2018. For 2018, the ministry has projected a real growth of 3.5 percent, which, with the planned inflation, creates room for increase in salaries and pensions.

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The statistical office produced an overview (with separate data in XLSX format) of the socio-economic situation during the first 9 months of 2017. Average paid employment in the private sector in the period of nine months of 2017 was by 4.4% higher than in 2016. The growth of the average monthly nominal gross wages and salaries in the private sector in the period of January-September 2017 was higher than a year before (in the 3rd quarter the dynamics strengthened). The purchasing power of wages and salaries increased to a lesser extent than in 2016, with consumer prices rising.

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The observatory Ebitemp for temporary work reported on recent developments in the sector (with graphs and figures). The number of temporary agency workers in August 2017 was up by 6.8% on an annual basis. The number of temp workers in August 2017 reached 419,800 compared with 392,959 in the same period of 2016. The number of hours worked in August 2017 increased by 21.6% on an annual basis. Ebitemp was set up by the trade unions in the temporary agency sector and the three trade union confederations, together with the main employers’ organisations in the temporary agency sector.

Read on: in English … The Ebitemp report, in Italian …

By the level of median wages in some of its cities China has overtaken, according to the Forbes magazine, certain parts of Europe. The median salary in Shanghai (980 euro), Beijing (849 euro) and Shenzhen (810 euro) is higher than in Croatia, the newest member of the EU, where the median net salary is 766 euro.

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In an open letter in the journal El País, it is said that the country misses a social contract between previously antagonistic forces. The social democratic parties accepted that the market economy was a valid instrument of wealth creation. For its part, classical liberalism accepted the creation of a social state. On the one hand, an educational system aimed at guaranteeing equal opportunities. On the other, a system of public insurance and social programs aimed at covering the contingencies of loss of income due to unemployment, illness and retirement. A social contract that reconciled market economy, social progress and democracy was enshrined in agreements, signed by the government, the main political and trade union forces of the left and business organisations. That contract began to crumble in the nineties with the fall of wages and the return of inequality, both social and territorial. The final blow was given by the austerity policy. It attacked the basic pillars of education, health, pensions and unemployment benefits.

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Teachers’ trade union AOb surveyed over 10 thousand teachers and other education staff about the current situation, after 95 percent of them took part in the second general strike of primary school teachers since the 1980s. 47 percent of respondents said that the new government's plans for primary education are completely insufficient. And 96 percent said they want the union to arrange further action, 63 percent suggested a national strike. The budget set aside by the new government for primary education in its government agreement, is not enough. Next to better wages, the teachers ask for less time on administrative tasks.

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