Collective Bargaining

Trade union confederation SGB/USS has formulated its demands for the next bargaining round. The trade union notes that the economic outlook is rather positive with an increase in export and no serious budgetary problems. In order to strengthen the purchase power, in a situation with low inflation (at a 0.5% rate), the demands vary from nominal amounts to a 1.5% wage increase combined with sickness allowances.
French: http://www.uss.ch/themes/economie/article/details/des-augmentations-de-salaires .
German: http://www.sgb.ch/themen/wirtschaft/artikel/details/lohnerhoehungen-bis-zu-15 .

The University of Hertfordshire and Ipsos MORI, in association with the Foundation for European Progressive Studies (FEPS), UNI Europa and AK Wien carried out a Gig Economy Survey in Austria. It revealed that a substantial minority of workers (18%) earns today a significant part of its income through sharing economy platforms such as Upwork, Uber or Handy, although this income is often modest. Almost half (48%) of crowd workers in the survey who divulged their earnings earn less than €18,000 a year. A particular feature of the gig economy is the fact that the range of work types is extremely broad, from high-skill professional work at one extreme to running errands at the other. The most common type of crowd work, done by some 74% of crowd workers, is office work, short tasks or `click work` done online - but almost equally large numbers say they are doing creative or IT work (62%) or professional work (49%).
English: http://pr.euractiv.com/pr/austrian-study-shows-gig-economy-rise .
German: https://media.arbeiterkammer.at/wien/PDF/studien/digitalerwandel .
The brochure: http://www.uni-europa.org/wp-content .

The flag carrier KLM and the trade union FNV concluded a pay deal for the airline's 14,500 ground crew, heading off the risk of further strike action. The agreement, which still has to be approved by members, involves `more money', more permanent jobs for staffing agency workers and ensures older workers will keep their extra days off until 2023, the FNV said. The union said in a statement that herewith KLM has ended its race to the bottom.
English: http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2016/09/airline-klm-and-trade-union-fnv .

Developments in Working Life in Europe is part of a series of annual reviews published by Eurofound. It provides an overview of the latest developments in industrial relations and working conditions across the EU and Norway. The Annual Review collates information based on reports from a network of European correspondents throughout 2015, complemented by research findings, including data from Eurofound's European working conditions survey (EWCS) and Eurofound's company survey (ECS). The review contains 10 thematic chapters, each of which provides an overview of the current situation and explores European and national level developments. Chapter 4 provides an updated overview of trends and developments in collective bargaining.
English: http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/sites/default .

The government is accelerating the process of converting suspensions of public workers allegedly affiliated to the Fethullah Gulen movement into permanent dismissals as further clues also emerged about the criteria used to identify Gulenists. A decree published in the Official Gazette on 1 September announced the dismissal of more than 10,000 public sector workers, ranging from academics to healthcare personnel. In public universities, 2,346 academics were dismissed while the number of lay-offs by the health ministry stood at 1,825 including administrative and healthcare staff.
English: http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/turkey-sacks-10000-public-staff-gulenist-hunt .

The Eurofound report Changes in remuneration and rewards systems reveals that performance-related pay and employee reward systems in Europe are often unevenly distributed among different groups of workers; particularly benefitting men, highly-skilled and highly ranked workers. Without robust monitoring and transparency, supplementary employee reward systems could potentially exacerbate pre-existing pay inequalities. The use of supplementary employee reward systems has become a well-established practice. These are schemes used by companies to reward performance and motivate employees both as individuals and as a group.
English: http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/news .

This summer, the statistical office published the annual report Finland in figures 2016. The report can be downloaded and provides a broad collection of statistics and data, ranging from sector information to population, prices and costs. Three separate sections are dedicated to respectively Income and Consumption, Labour Market issues and Wages, Salaries and Labour Costs.
English: http://www.stat.fi/tup/julkaisut/tiedostot/julkaisuluettelo .

Trade union GPF has concluded a collective agreement for the workers in the bus service ÖBB-Postbus GmbH. The outcome of the negotiations is a wage increase between 1.6 and 1.9%, with a minimum of 40 euro. The union stated that this result (with a duration until 31 August 2017) is a success, given the current inflation rate (0.8%) and the difficult conditions in the ÖBB-Group.
German: http://www.gpf.at/news .

Trade union officials started legal action against a decision by energy giant EDF to go ahead with the project of setting up a new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point in the UK. Five directors of EDF, representing workers, started proceedings in Paris aimed at annulment of the group's investment in the £18 billion scheme. EDF's board has voted to press ahead with building the power station in Somerset, but the UK government has made an announcement that it wanted time to study the already-delayed scheme. A decision is now expected in the autumn 2026, following speculation that Prime Minister May is concerned about the involvement of Chinese state-owned CGN in the project.
English: https://www.energyvoice.com/other-news/118154/french-unions-challenge-hinkley .

The Federation of Transport and Communications Unions (Fectrans), the trade union representing transport workers, expressed `immense reservations' regarding the transfer of Lisbon's bus and tram operator to the city council. The union fears that the authority could in future move to subcontract such services and pleads for a good alternative, namely the creation of a Metropolitan Transport Authority for the management and organisation of the public service of the various companies.
English: http://www.theportugalnews.com/news/transport-union-reservations .