Thousands of school students were protesting in Madrid on 26 October 2016 against new school-education 'reforms' which will apply more tests to qualify for university. The new exams are part of the LOMCE education Act, which teachers, parents and students say will restrict the curriculum to the needs of the state and business, crush wider learning and critical thinking, and is tantamount to indoctrination. The law also increases the drive to privatisation. The protesters were joined by thousands of parents and teachers, also protesting against the LOMCE reforms and for the defence of public education. The main teachers' unions had not organised a national strike joining the students’ action but some teachers’ unions were supporting the action. The Ministry of Education has estimated that 12% of school teachers joined this strike.
English: http://www.teachersolidarity.com/blog/spanish-school-students-strike-today ...
Spanish: http://www.abc.es/sociedad/abci-educacion-solo-12-por-ciento-profesores ...
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The trade unions were invited to be informed about a new business plan at Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena. The plan envisages 1,600 layoffs until 2019, on top of another 1,400 previously announced. A union representative told this to the press as he was entering the premises where the bank's board was discussing the new business plan. He also said the new plan would include 300 new hires. The bank plans to lay off a tenth of its staff, shut branches and sell assets to win investor backing for a €5-billion cash call. Another bank, the Banca Popolare di Vicenza, announced cuts between 1300 and 1500 jobs. The bank said that it wanted to convince the trade unions of the necessity of these redundancies.
English: http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-eurozone-banks-montepaschi-layoffs ...
http://www.gazzettadelsud.it/news/english/218215/banca-pop-vicenza-to-shed ...
The Office for national Statistics has published its Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings: 2016 provisional results. The Statistical bulletin provides a rich variety of data on levels, distribution and make-up of earnings and hours worked for employees by sex and full-time or part-time status in all industries and occupations. Based on these statistics, trade union confederation TUC has calculated that women earn less than men annually at every stage in their careers. The gender pay gap begins as soon as women start their careers. This increases steadily through her 20s, when a woman earns on average £1,944 less a year than men of a similar age and 30s, when the annual pay gap hits £3,034. However, the gender pay gap is at its widest when a woman hits 50. Then, a woman earns £85,040 less over the course of this decade than a full-time man.
English: http://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork … http://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours …
https://www.tuc.org.uk/equality-issues/gender-equality/equal-pay/women-earn ...
The results of the Labour Force Survey (presented with tables in Polish and English) for the second quarter of 2016 indicate a growth in the employed population, compared to the second quarter of 2015, (similar for men and woman), with a simultaneous significant decline in the population of the unemployed (greater for woman), a decrease in the number of the economically inactive and an increase in the total employment rate. This indicator increased slightly more in the male population than among women. Also updated was the overview of average gross wages and salaries.
English: http://stat.gov.pl/en/topics/labour-market/working-unemployed-economically-inactive ...
http://stat.gov.pl/en/topics/labour-market/working-employed-wages-and-salaries-cost-of-labour ...
The Supreme Court of Cantabria has determined that the applicable agreement to workers, hired by the agency Acciona Multiservicios SA and working at a Nissan plant in Los Corrales de Buelna, must be the regional agreement for the iron and steel industry and not the own company agreement. The management of the Japanese multinational wanted to use an own agreement. The local action committee and the trade unions USO, UGT and CCOO said that this will implicate an increase of more than 35% on the monthly salary for each worker.
Spanish: http://www.uso.es/el-tsjc-determina-la-aplicacion-del-convenio-del-metal ...
The government has announced that the minimum wage will go up, as from 1 January 2017, from 370 to 380 euro. Figures of the Central Statistical Bureau revealed that there were 177,800 employed persons in April of 2016 who received a monthly salary of 370 euro or less. 144,500 of these employed persons worked in the private sector, 30,600 in the public sector.
English: http://www.baltic-course.com/eng/finances ...
Locomotive engineers working for state railway NSB were gearing for a meeting at the national mediator’s office on 15 October 2015. The worker representatives announced that they were preparing a proposal for a possible settlement. The strike at Norwegian State Railways (NSB) and CargoNet began on 29 September 2016. The trade union of train personnel (NLF) said that drivers had to intensify their action because there had been no contacts between the union and the employers. NSB and CargoNet – both state owned – have introduced plans to drastically reduce the training programs for locomotive drivers. The NLF is demanding that the companies accept a national training program as the basis for all locomotive drivers training and that this program is developed on a tripartite level by the authorities, employers and trade unions.
English: http://www.norhouse.com/norway-news/
http://www.itfglobal.org/en/news-events/news/2016/october/support-norways-train-drivers ...
Four different reports pay attention to the size and impact of the gender pay gap. An IAB-paper estimates size and impact factors of the gender pay gap in Europe. The authors analyse 21 EU countries plus Norway, which clearly exceeds the scope of existing microdata studies. They also examine the sources of the unexplained gap. The sectoral segregation of genders is identified as the most important barrier to gender pay equality. In addition, the fact that part-time positions are more frequent among women notably contributes to the gap. The authors conclude that policies aiming at closing the gender pay gap should focus more on the sector level than on the aggregate economy. In its Global Gender Gap Report, the World Economic Forum quantifies the magnitude of gender disparities and tracks their progress over time, with a specific focus on the relative gaps between women and men across four key areas: health, education, economy and politics. It reveals that, despite a high regional average compared to the rest of the world, there is wide spread of outcomes among the European countries, with the Western region performing better than Eastern Europe. In a detailed Eurofound report on women’s labour participation and the consequences of the gender gap, it is revealed that, on average, women in the EU earned around 16.1% less per hour than men in 2014. In spite of more than 30 years of equal pay legislation, the gender pay gap remained persistent across all Member States, regardless of the overall level of female employment, national welfare models or equality legislation. The London-based business comparison site Expert Market has mapped gender pay gap data from 40 European nations to show exactly when in the year women effectively start working for free.
English: http://doku.iab.de/discussionpapers ...
http://www3.weforum.org/docs ...
http://www.expertmarket.co.uk/gender-pay-gap-in-europe
http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/sites/default/files ...
Hundreds of thousands of electricity customers may be affected by a strike of electrical workers. The strike has been underway since talks broke down more than a month ago between four trade unions and municipal employers’ organisation KS Bedrift. Members of trade unions EL og IT Forbundet, Fagforbundet, Delta and Parat were first called off the job on 22 September 2016. The strike has been expanded since then and now, with 1,091 employees in 74 energy companies off the job, does it seriously threaten to result in electrical power failures, because many of those who maintain and repair power lines and stations are on strike. Companies affected by the strike serve around 380,000 of the 2.5 million electricity customers. The conflict is over how much compensatory time workers can take off after being on long duty shifts that can run for seven days in a row. The unions want to insert three compensation days into labour contracts, instead of the two days guaranteed under state labour law. The employers find that compensation exceeding benefits provided in labour law must be negotiated locally and not in a national agreement.
English: http://www.norhouse.com/norway-news/
The government is moving to allow 15-year-olds to serve alcohol in restaurants. Currently, the minimum age is 18. The current law forbids minors from working in places that serve spirits (hard liquor). The government’s proposal would allow 15-year-olds to clean and wash up, and would also permit them to serve customers until 11 pm under the supervision of an adult. Trade union 3F and opposition party SF are strongly against the government’s proposal that could create situations whereby youngsters become responsible for the further intake of people ‘who have become too drunk’.
English: http://cphpost.dk/news/danish-government-would-allow-minors-to-serve-alcohol ...