Collective Bargaining

The National Health Service (NHS), with its 1.5 million employees, ranks amongst the five largest employers in the world. What is remarkable about the NHS staff is that all 1.5 of them are covered by collective agreements at a time when fewer than 27.9% of UK workers are covered by collective bargaining. However, in 2016, things were no longer as rosy for NHS patients and staff due to government’s tight controls on public spending to meet debt reduction targets at a time when demand for health services is rising while the social care system is struggling under years of successive cuts.
English: http://www.global-labour-university.org/fileadmin/GLU_Column ...

Police in Naples banned a protest march which had been planned by employees of archaeological site Pompeii. The UNSA and FLP unions, representing employees of the site, had asked for authorisation to hold a demonstration in front of the entrances to Pompeii. The protest was planned at the same time as the visit to the site by Italy's Culture Minister Dario Franceschini and European Commissioner Corina Cretu. Police said the reason for banning the protest was to ‘protect public order’. There have been ongoing disputes between workers at the heritage site and the Ministry of Culture, both over pay and working conditions.
English: http://www.thelocal.it/20170208/pompeii-protest-march-banned-by-naples-police

Calls for a universal basic income have been growing in recent years, particularly with the rise of precarious employment in industrialised societies. Most current models of social security mean that recipients of out of work benefits are often penalised for taking on short-term or part-time work. But basic income is not without its critics. An economist at the Central Organisation of Finnish Trade Unions, SAK, welcomes attempts to reform the social security system, but says basic income is not the best mechanism to do so because the model trialled now is economically unrealistic. It would increase the deficit by 5%. A cost-neutral basic income, on the contrary, would not incentivise to work, or it would lead to a reduction in the level of social security.
English: https://www.equaltimes.org/can-finland-overhaul-its-social ...

The Reform think-tank published a ‘work in progress’ report dedicated to the public-sector workforce. The authors state that recruitment difficulty is experienced because the pay differentials between public and private-sector commercial directors are still too large. Public services also suffer from a skills deficit in key areas. According to the report, robots and computers could replace almost 250,000 public sector jobs over the next 15 years. Using websites and artificially intelligent ‘chat bots’ could improve efficiency and save billions of pounds - but at huge cost for workers who lose steady jobs. The changes could also affect around 30% of nursing tasks, including information collection and handing out non-intravenous medication, and even doctors. Reform argues that public services should embrace the ‘gig economy’ - with workers picking up jobs on an ad hoc basis through online platforms.
English: http://www.reform.uk/wp-content ...

A labour market analysis revealed that there were 4.9 million work contracts in 2015, and a working population of 8.4 million. The statistics confirm previous Eurostat data according to which Romania is one of the European countries with one of the lowest rates of employment by work contract. Alongside Greece and Turkey, Romania is one of the countries where the share of employees from the total active population stands below 75%, due to the high number of people working as self-employed persons. By contrast, the EU average stands at 84.6%, while in countries such as Denmark, Estonia, Luxembourg, Sweden and Norway the percentage of employees from the active population exceeds 90%. The main occupational groups that recorded increases in the number of individual work contracts were the low-skilled workers in the extractive industry, construction sector, processing industry and transports. The most significant decreases were registered among specialists in science and engineering, where individual work contracts went down by 25,992, and healthcare, where the number of contracts went down by 8,371.
English: http://www.romania-insider.com/romanias-number-of-skilled-employees ...

Shoe e-retailer Torfs is the first company to reach an agreement with the trade unions on night work since the introduction of new rules in January 2017. The agreement covers overnight hours in the chain’s warehouses, where workers will prepare and dispatch online orders. The plan is to deliver orders made online by 22.00 the next day. According to the agreement – which has still to be signed – warehouse workers will finish work at 23.00, three hours later than they do now. The late hours will be paid at a bonus rate of 25% higher than the basic rate. The plan is that only those workers who want to work later will do so.
English: http://www.flanderstoday.eu/business/shoe-chain-first-give-green-light-night-shift

Negotiations with a national mediator between the trade union Junit and employers’ organisation NHO Luftfart averted a strike by airline ground crews at four airports after an agreement was reached. Flights were thus taking off as scheduled on Sunday 5 February. According to the agreement, the employees of Widerøe Ground Handling will receive raises of 2.6 percent, while those with high seniority and experience stand to receive additional compensation.
English: http://www.newsinenglish.no/2017/02/05/strike-averted-among-airport-ground-crews

Trade unions and employers in construction have finally concluded an agreement. However, they could not settle a deal on wage increase. The trade union members will have a final say in March. Over the last years, the negotiations have been complicated with many issues unsolved. In December 2015, the bargaining partners decided to keep the sectoral pension age at 60 years and to prolong the existing collective agreement. In the current round several pending provisions have been dealt with: the promotion to a higher wage scale (after 3 years in service), the joint payment of the contribution for sickness insurance, increased allowances for lunches and the restauration of the financing of the paritarian fund.
French: http://www.unia.ch/fr/actualites ...
German: http://www.unia.ch/de/aktuell ...

The Federal Government has approved the inter-professional salary agreement for the next two years. The agreement on rules that govern the amount wages can be increased over the next two years also includes measures that will prolong the system of pre-pension for another two years. The trade union members and employers' federations had already approved the accord. The agreement states that wages can rise up to 1.1% above the rate of inflation. The lowest benefits are also to be increased. The age at which people can take pre-pension will also be raised, but less quickly than the government had originally wanted.
English: http://deredactie.be/cm/vrtnieuws.english/Economy ...

Released STATEC data (for 2014) reveal that those who worked in the financial and education sectors earned the highest salaries up to 90,000 euros per year. The research shows that the housing and catering industries were heading in the opposite direction with the lowest salaries. STATEC explains the wage differences by worker profiles, taking into account factors such as educational level, age and seniority in the company. The average annual salary was 59.7 thousand euro; this could reach 90 thousand euro for workers in finance and insurance. In the catering industry, the average salary was little more than 30 thousand euro per year.
English: http://www.wort.lu/en/business/statec-data-huge-divide-in-luxembourg-wages ...
The report (in French): http://www.statistiques.public.lu/catalogue-publications ...