After mediated negotiations, trade unions and the employers' confederation have reached an agreement to raise the minimum wage to €430 in 2016 and €470 in 2017. As reported in last month's newsletter, social partners failed to reach an agreement and a public conciliator proposed to raise the minimum wage to €440 by 2016 and €460 the year after. Employers rejected the offer, but have now accepted a slight smaller increase in 2016, compensated by a higher increase in 2017.
English: http://news.err.ee/v/economy/.
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Low-cost supermarket Aldi has announced that it will be closing four stores. Personnel at the Entroncamento, Ourém and Odivelas outlets will be transferred to other stores. However, all staff at the fourth store in Portalegre is expected to be laid off.
English: http://portugalresident.com/aldi-closes-four-stores-in-portugal
Negotiations in the metal sector stranded early this year and a series of strikes started. Finally, the negotiators in the Metal & Technical branches (mainly SMEs) reached an agreement. The agreement foresees a structural increase of pay of 4.05% (over the period March 2015 - May 2017) and a one-off increase of 0.65%. The applicable youth scales go up by an average of 7%. The agreement makes it easier for individual workers to opt for a 4-days working week, in exchange of existing holidays and other days off. The strikes in the larger metal branches are still continuing after unsuccessful negotiations.
Dutch: https://www.fnv.nl/sector-en-cao/alle-sectoren/metaal/metaal-en-techniek/.
A broad coalition of civil society organisations, including trade unions, has organised massive protests mobilised against the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. In Berlin more than 250,000 people protested, making it the biggest manifestation the country has seen in decades. The opponents argue that the deals give too much power to multinational companies at the expense of consumers and workers. Supporters of the deal, which lowers trade barriers, say it would boost economies and create jobs.
English: http://nupge.ca/content/12561/canadians-participate-massive-rally.
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/i-didn-t-think-ttip-could-get-any-scarier.
Following the failure of social partners to negotiate a new minimum wage, the government has announced it is raising the minimum wage to €405. The increase comes close to the €410 that had been suggested by trade unions and remains far from employers' requests to keep it at the current €380. The raise will also lift the minimum wage from 50% of the average salary to 51%. Trade unions have welcomed the hike, whereas employers warned that low educated workers would find it increasingly difficult to get a job, as the minimum wage was raised by a total 15% over recent years.
English: http://spectator.sme.sk/c/20061675/minimum-wage-to-increase.html
The problematic outlook in the oil and energy sector probably will get another blow as Statoil, still the country's biggest company, is seriously evaluating whether to move hundreds of administrative jobs to a lower-cost `business centre,' probably in an eastern European country. The move would have serious consequences to the Stavanger area where Statoil is based, with economists predicting the region faces at least three more years of declining real estate prices and harder times. At the moment, the company is still working to finish the early downsizing processes, which have reduced the total staffing by around 20% since 2013. The last round will result in between 1,000 and 1,500 workers leaving the company within the 2016.
English: http://www.newsinenglish.no/2015/10/14/statoil-may-move-many-jobs-abroad/
Teachers unions have warned that the proposed teacher remuneration scheme will result in a pay cut for 55% of teachers. In the proposed `money follows the student' system, teacher remuneration would be made dependent on the number of students in the classroom. The Trade Union of Education and Science Employees calculated the change would mean a de facto pay cut for 370 out of 651 general education teachers.
English: http://www.leta.lv/eng/home/important/.
Trade union confederation CGIL has strongly criticised the postponement of a pension reform to let people retire earlier on lower pensions. According to the union, the pension measure should be in the 2016 budget. Renzi had said it would cause `problems' to try and insert pension flexibility into the 2016 budget. In the September Newsletter, we reported that the government was working towards a change to pension laws that would let women retire three years early, at 62-63, while taking a 10% pension cut, taking effect in 2016.
English: http://www.gazzettadelsud.it/news/english/162480/Renzi.
The OECD-report `How's Life?' describes the essential ingredients that shape people's well-being in OECD and partner countries. It includes a wide variety of statistics, capturing both material well-being (such as income, jobs and housing) and the broader quality of people's lives (such as their health, education, work-life balance, environment, social connections, civic engagement, subjective well-being and safety). The report shows that children are paying a high price for today's growing inequality. Income poverty affects one child in seven in OECD countries, while 10% of children live in jobless households. Since the economic crisis, child poverty rates have risen in two thirds of OECD countries. In most OECD countries, the poverty rate for children is higher than for the population in general. The report also reveals that countries experiencing the most severe declines in household income since 2009 (such as Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy) continue to feel the pain, ranging from high joblessness and reduced earnings, to less affordable housing.
English: http://www.oecd.org/statistics/how-s-life-23089679.htm
In an article that originally appeared in the Dagens Nyheter newspaper economic analyst Mårten Blix outlines how to make sure jobs are not lost when digitalisation grows and robots take over skilled labour. He notices that there has been significant job polarisation in many OECD countries in recent decades, resulting in a shrinking middle class. In Sweden, this trend has so far taken place mostly through an increase of highly-paid jobs and strong real wage growth over the past 20 years. This is in contrast to the United States, where large groups have not received any increase in real wages over long periods. He states that the trend of job polarisation will continue. According to the author the risk that large groups in Sweden will experience weak wage growth and that robots will take over depends on how the challenges are managed - by politicians and by the labour market partners. In the end, technological developments will lead to greater prosperity, but the path could be tumultuous if unwise decisions or no decisions at all, are made.
English: http://www.thelocal.se/jobs/article/will-robots-take-over-your-job-in-sweden