Collective Bargaining

Trade unions and employers signed an agreement that leads to the return of the cost of living allowance (Cola) after being frozen for 5 years as part of austerity measures introduced as the country sought a bailout. Cola will be reintroduced on 1 January 2018 for a three-year transition period pending a permanent arrangement. The deal provides that Cola will be added to the salary once a year, provided the economy showed growth in the second and third quarters of the previous year. The allowance will represent 50% of the annual rise in the consumer price index, and it will be incorporated into basic salaries. Salaries will not be reduced in the event of deflation and if conditions for its payment are not met it will be frozen.

English: http://cyprus-mail.com/2017/07/28/deal-signed-return-cost-living-allowance/

http://in-cyprus.com/peo-and-oeb-accept-labour-ministers-cola-proposal/

The Food and Allied Workers Union (NGG) has signed a national agreement with the fast food employers' association following months of nation-wide strikes and national and local protest actions in response to the employers' refusal to pay a living wage. Fast food workers will receive wage increases of between 7.3% and 8.7% over the coming 29 months, and a new starting wage of 9 euro per hour beginning 1 August 2017.

English: http://www.iuf.org/w ...

The country’s finance minister has said that some 80% of older workers may in October 2017 take advantage of new rights to retire earlier. But, the acting government wants to keep as much as possible the people entitled to retirement on the labour market. From 1 October, women will have the right to retire at 60 and men at 65. The previous government introduced in 2013 a gradual increase of the retirement age to 67 for both men and women.

English: http://www.thenews.pl/1/9/Artykul ...

Workers at APS Debt Servicing bank, owned by the Prague-based APS Holdings SA and the Hellenic bank, started a 48-hour strike. The protest was against planned changes in the employment terms of workers. Trade union Etyk later on suspended the strike following the intervention of the labour ministry that led to an agreement. According to the deal struck, the jobs and benefits of Hellenic employees transferred to APS are ‘fully safeguarded’, with clear provisions ensuring ‘existing and future collective agreements, the right to be transferred back to the bank, and many other clauses protecting colleagues fully’.

English: http://cyprus-mail.com/2017/07/27/labour-minister ...

A Statec report presenting a detailed analysis, reveals significant social and economic inequalities across the country. The percentage of people living on the social minimum wage varies between 0.5 per cent and 8.5 per cent (the national average is 3.6%). While a higher amount of people receives the social minimum wage in the north of Luxembourg as opposed to the southern region, a number of communes are an exception, scoring relatively high, including Luxembourg City, the communes along the German border, as well as certain communes in the cantons of Echternach, Mersch and Redange.

English: https://www.wort.lu/en/luxembourg/index-statec-report …

The report (in French): http://www.statistiques.public.lu/catalogue-publications …

Following UNISON’s legal challenge, the Supreme Court has ruled that employment tribunal fees are unlawful because they price workers out of accessing justice and discriminate against women. Supreme Court rules that employment tribunal fees have unfair effect on access to justice. According to unions, this ruling is a massive step towards ensuring that working people can enforce their employment rights.

English: http://touchstoneblog.org.uk/2017/07/employment-tribunal-fees-found-unlawful/

UNISON story: https://www.unison.org.uk/news/article/2017/08/employment-tribunal-fees ...

The ruling: https://www.supremecourt.uk/cases ...

The country’s president announced that salaries will increase on a permanent basis and pensions will increase as well, based on a government decision before the end of 2017. This means that there will be a significant increase in salaries and a more significant increase in pensions than in previous years. The president indicated an increase to and average monthly wage of almost 500 euro by the end of 2018.

English: http://www.b92.net/eng/news/business …

Trade union GPA concluded a collective agreement for around 15,000 juridical assistants working in the Vienna region. One of the key achievements is the increase of the monthly minimum pay to 1500 euro (as of 1 October 2017). Another improvement is the increase of the apprenticeship remuneration to a monthly 700 euro in the first year. GPA is still fighting for a country-wide collective agreement that would guarantee the achieved minimum wage all over the country.

German: https://www.gpa-djp.at/cms ...

The agreement (in German): http://www.kollektivvertrag.at/kv/rechtsanwalt-angestellte-w-ang

The Chamber of Labour (AK) wants 6-week holiday rights for all. Currently, the holiday right is limited to 5 weeks. Only workers with at least 25 years of services in a company profit from an additional week. The AK strives for an extension of this right for all workers and is of the opinion that the restriction is unfair for temporary workers, women and EU-workers that are mobile. So far, a national procedure in a case with workers from different member states, often with long careers at home, failed before the regional and the higher court. The organisation has decided to appeal to the Court of Justice of the EU.

German: https://ooe.arbeiterkammer.at/service/presse …

A Eurofound report discusses developments in collectively agreed wages in the EU in 2016, putting them into the perspective of developments over the past 15 years. The tendency for growth in both nominal and real collectively agreed wages from 2015 continued. In two countries (Belgium and Malta), collectively agreed pay in real terms was still not above the pre-crisis level. In terms of real wage increases (that is, wage increases taking into account the change in the level of prices), Slovakia had the highest increase (4.1%), followed by the Czech Republic (2.4%) and Germany (2%). The lowest real increases were observed in Finland (0.2%) and Malta (0.3%), while the real collectively agreed wage actually fell in Belgium (-1.2%).

English: https://www.eurofound.europa.eu/sites ...