Collective Bargaining

The country’s largest trade union SIPTU has called for the Government to hold a referendum to give unions rights to engage in collective bargaining on behalf of their members. Under the current law trade unions have the right to organise workers, but, employers also have the right not to recognise unions for the purposes of collective bargaining. At SIPTU’s biennial conference, in Cork, the delegates debated a motion calling for a referendum to be held to provide workers with a constitutional right to engage in collective bargaining. Outgoing general president Jack O’Connor criticised the fact that workers still do not enjoy a constitutional entitlement to participate fully in collective bargaining with their employers.

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The management of Magyar Telekom (MTel) reached an agreement with the trade unions on a reduction of staff and wage rises for 2018. MTel said it would lay off 350 staff under the agreement. Most of the layoffs are expected to take place by the end of 2017. A further 160 employees are expected to leave the company as a result of an ongoing restructuring. MTel estimated severance pay for staff made redundant would reach HUF 2.8 billion, most of which will be accounted in Q4 2017. Under the agreement, salaries will rise by an average 5% from the start of 2018.

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One year after the creation of the FRONERI ice cream joint venture by Nestlé and the French private equity firm PAI Partners, the company has launched a full-blown attack on workers throughout Europe. The attack targets factory workers, salesforce and office workers in Germany, Finland, Switzerland, and in Greece and Italy, factory closures have been announced. So far, some 850 workers risk losing their jobs so the company can reach a target of 20% operating margin. Workers at the former Nestlé factory in Parma were informed that the company intends to close the factory and dismiss 180 workers. The food workers unions have issued a joint statement demanding the withdrawal of the collective dismissal procedure and closure plans.

Read on: in English … The statement, in Italian …

Picturehouse Cinemas threatened to sack striking workers ahead of a planned walk-out over pay at five London cinemas. Workers represented by trade union Bectu announced plans to disrupt the British Film Institute’s London film festival between 4 and 15 October, with nine days of strike action in a dispute over the living wage and other rights, including sick pay. However, as the dispute entered a second year, the cinema chain rejected the claim that the strike action is valid. The British Film Institute previously said it supported the Picturehouse workers’ call for payment of the living wage, which it paid its own employees.

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The national bank produces every year a database on the distribution of capital based on the so-called HFCS-system (Household Finance and Consumption Survey) of the European Central Bank, which calculates the financial situation of individual households. However, the financial situation of the superrich is not really captured by this method. In order to fill the gap, the Arbeiterkammer has assigned a team of researchers with the task to statistically analyse the inequality in capital ownership focusing on the top of the wealth distribution. The result is a working paper that reveals an undercoverage at the top of the distribution and a systematic underestimation of total wealth and wealth inequality.

Read on: the working paper, in German …

The Union of Education Workers (Eğitim-Sen) announced that 682 of its member teachers in the south-eastern provinces of Şanlıurfa, Diyarbakır, and Gaziantep have been assigned to different schools against their wishes, just a few days before schools are reopened for the new academic year. One of the reasons cited for the compulsory reassignments is reported to be ‘participation in marches not in line with the Turkish Republic’s fight against terrorism, in which slogans of “murderer state” were shouted’. The union said in a press meeting that its members had been reassigned to various Central Anatolian provinces, and the union fears the teachers may face attacks in their reassigned areas.

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There is much debate about the consequences of the recent wage increases in CEE-countries. However, employers report more problems with labour shortages than with increased wages. The main cause for this is productivity. While wage increases are currently outstripping efficiency gains, the opposite has been the case for a long period. CEE wage growth lagged behind productivity gains and average labour costs in the EU’s 10 eastern members were about a quarter of Germany’s at the end of 2016. Productivity, on the other hand, was two-thirds that of Europe’s biggest economy, according to Bloomberg calculations based on Eurostat data.

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Due to a lack of corporate responsibility, Uber loses the licence to operate in London. Uber has expanded by ignoring existing rules. This has prompted protests against the ride-hailing company by drivers, run-ins with national authorities, and new laws designed to curb its activities. The decision by Transport for London to strip Uber of its licence was the latest in a long line of clashes between the US firm and the regulators. Prominent Tory politicians and prime minister May criticised the decision as ‘disproportionate’.

Read on: in English (1) … in English (2) … the decision (in English) …

As a result of collective bargaining between the trade unions and the employers in hospitality, salaries in the Balearic hospitality sector will increase by 17% between 2018 and 2021. The deal will affect 137,000 people employed in this key sector of the regional economy, but has an impact far beyond the sector. In the booming tourism industry, a driver of economic growth and job creation, this should also lead to higher salaries. The agreed increase will be 5% in 2018, 5% in 2019, 3.5% in 2020, and 3.5% in 2021. This is well above the annual figure in the expiring 2014 collective bargaining deal that included an increase of 1.3% until August. The agreement also makes it harder to cut labour costs through subcontracting. Subcontractors are not only forced to ensure that their wages are the same as those specified in the agreement, but also have to comply with working hours and breaks.

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A 2013 teacher lockout that kept over 550,000 public school students out of class for 4 weeks was orchestrated by the government, according to a former minister in a new book. The minister writes that the government of then PM Helle Thorning-Schmidt made an agreement with Local Government Denmark (Kommunernes Landsforening), the interest group that represents the 98 municipalities, to bar the nation’s teachers from doing their jobs. The teachers’ union refused in 2013 to sign a collective bargaining agreement that gave school leaders, rather than the teachers themselves, more responsibility for deciding teachers’ work schedules. When the two sides were unable to reach an agreement, publicly-employed teachers and after-school instructors were locked out nationwide. The conflict lasted a month before the government stepped in and passed a bill that forced the teachers to accept the new working conditions.

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