An NGO has stated that the situation for those who are under the poverty limit is far worse than citizens and society realise. In total, the number of people in need of assistance are around 2400 and many hundreds of them are children. There is one group particularly noticed, people that had a bad turn in the 2008 financial crash. These people lost their property, lost their jobs and were unemployed for some time. Many lost their vitality and will as a consequence and this impacts their health and mental health heavily. They are now renting flats on very expensive rates, as the rent prices have surged with the tourist bomb.
English: http://www.icenews.is/2016/12/17/poverty-in-iceland-860-families-need-help …
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After a series of six bargaining talks the management of railway company Deutsche Bahn and the union of train drivers could not come to an agreement. There is no new date for the reopening of the negotiations, However, strikes are not envisaged, with a view on the Christmas and end of the year holidays. The union demands a substantial pay increase, next to an improved regulation of the working and rest time system.
German: http://www.handelsblatt.com/unternehmen/handel-konsumgueter/deutsche-bahn …
Following a sustained mobilisation by the trade unions, more stringent legislation aiming to eliminate human trafficking in agriculture has been adopted by the Parliament. The law amends the 2014 law on Quality Work in Agriculture to assist migrant workers and incentivise adherence to collective agreements. According to FLAI-CGIL, the crime of worker exploitation has now, for the first time, been established in law. The law establishes that the criminal offence of recruiting or employing workers under illegal and exploitative conditions will be sanctioned with imprisonment for up to 6 years, increasing to 8 years if threats or violence are involved. Besides, the law imposes fines of up to 2,000 euro per worker in these cases.
English: http://www.iuf.org …
Trade union FNV has called off a strike at Shell's Pernis oil refinery even though it has rejected a pay proposal from the oil company. The strike started on 9 December because of a pay dispute between Shell and the FNV and CNV unions. The CNV union has accepted the pay offer for workers at the refinery and neighbouring petrochemical plant. The FNV had asked for a 1.5% increase in 2016 and 1.75% in 2017.
English: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/one-two-dutch-unions-accepts …
Statistics published by the National Institute of Health and Welfare (THL) show that poverty has risen in recent years, especially among families with very young children. Five percent of children were found to be from families subsisting on basic social security alone in 2014, the year of the survey. The THL report shows that family poverty rate tripled in the twelve years from 1995 to 2007, and has remained at or around a stable 10 percent in the 2010s.
English: http://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/thl_tenth_of_families_with_children …
A research paper of the European Social Observatory (Ose) investigates the impact of austerity on certain fundamental rights. The eight years which have gone by give a striking perspective on the outcome of the strict austerity policies introduced in Europe. In the section on the right of work, the author lists a series of measures undertaken by the public authorities and national legislator: public sector job cuts; changes to working time and deregulation of atypical contracts with increasing precarity of contracts; simplifying of the conditions governing (collective) redundancy; pay cuts and freezes; weakening of unemployment protection.
English: http://www.ose.be/files/publication/OSEPaperSeries/Ghailani …
The statistical office STATEC outlined in a report the minimum budget required for different households in order to lead a decent life. The report bases its findings on the average costs of food, clothing, personal hygiene, accommodation (including electricity and other charges), healthcare, transport, social life, training and children's needs across the country. To ‘actively participate in society’, a man living alone would require minimum 1,923 euro per month, while for a woman the sum was 1,909 euro. The slight difference between the budgets of a man living alone and a woman were down to the fact that men would spend more on food.
English: http://www.wort.lu/en/lifestyle/statec-study-shows-minimum-budget-required …
The report (in French): http://www.statistiques.public.lu/fr/actualites/conditions-sociales …
Presenting the findings of a report on migration, the interior minister said the country needs around 50,000 migrants a year, who will work and pay social insurance. The population is shrinking and ageing. According to migration experts, the average birth rate of 1.4 children is not enough to counter this development. If the population does not grow the risk is that social benefits for all citizens will become unaffordable. However, the minister said that uncontrolled migration can be damaging to society and therefore he wants to set up a migration commission at the beginning of 2017 to come up with a strategy for controlled immigration.
English: http://www.thelocal.at/20161215/austrias-social-system-unaffordable-without-migration
The report (in German): http://www.infografiken.com/bmi-at/Flipbook …
The country’s flexible labour market allows employers to hire and fire workers in line with fluctuating demand. With the strong focus on activation and high spending on measures geared at helping jobseekers back into employment, many displaced workers receive the support and encouragement needed to find a new job. The unemployment benefit system provides income support to insured jobseekers in periods of unemployment. Nevertheless, challenges remain: despite the 2016 unemployment insurance reform fostering incentives to accept short-term, fixed-term and part-time employment, as a stepping stone back into jobs, benefit coverage remains a major challenge as many low-wage and low-skilled workers are not covered by the system.
English: http://www.oecd.org/newsroom/denmark-could-do-more …
Read online: http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/employment …
Get more newly arrived refugees into jobs, and as quickly as possible after their arrival. That is what the government and the social partners have agreed, and as a result they have expanded the number of measures which give financial support to private or public companies which take on refugees as workers. Both public and private companies often use traineeships, a publicly funded measure, as a way to give refugees an introduction to the workplace. And if the internship goes well, some companies choose to use wage subsidised jobs as a way of keeping the refugee in the workplace for a longer period of time.
English: http://www.nordiclabourjournal.org/i-fokus …
http://www.nordiclabourjournal.org/i-fokus …