After four days of talks at conciliation service Acas between trade union RMT and Network Rail management, the company has tabled a revised offer. The RMT Executive Committee has considered this offer and decided to suspend all industrial action which was scheduled to take place on 25 and 26 May. Earlier on the members of the trade unions RMT and TSSA balloted in favour of a walk out on 25 May in the first UK-wide rail strike in 20 years. Members also voted for a 48-hour ban on overtime. The unions had rejected a four-year deal, with a £500 lump sum per worker in 2015, followed by three years of increases matching inflation, as well as a commitment to no compulsory redundancies until December 2016. The new offer from Network Rail is believed to be a two-year deal, with an absolute pay rise for all members both years, and a pledge of no compulsory redundancies.
English: http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/may/21/rail-unions-call-off .
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In an ongoing privatisation process a total of 526 enterprises with about 92,000 employees remained to be privatised and 50 enterprises alone have total debts of around 4 billion euro, with the government claiming half of them. A total of 189 firms have already gone into bankruptcy, 24 of which are water management enterprises that will be merged with the public enterprises, 23 being veterinary stations that will be managed by local governments, and 72 media firms whose privatisation will also be completed by 1 July.
English: http://www.b92.net/eng/news/business .
Analysts at the statistical office Statec examined the aspect of cross-border work from a balance of payments' point of view. They studied the social payments of the 163,912 cross-border workers registered as working in Luxembourg in 2014. In the report (available only in French) it is said that cross-border workers pour more money into the social contributions funds than they get out. While 8 billion euro leave the Grand Duchy in salaries, these workers and their employers paid 1.8 billion euro in social payments while the benefits and health treatment they received amounted to just 1.63 billion euro.
English: https://www.wort.lu/en/business/163-912-cross-border-workers-in-2014 .
French: http://www.statistiques.public.lu/catalogue-publications/regards/2015 .
The Welfare Ministry reported a reduction in the number of residents registered as living below the poverty line in April 2015. The number of residents registered as living below the poverty line has reduced quite considerably since the beginning of last year, when 83,273 residents were registered as needy. In April 2015, the number of needy residents was 3.06% of the total population, compared to 3.21% in March.
English: http://www.baltic-course.com/eng/analytics .
The European Progressive Observatory has published a policy brief that summarises facts and figures related to income distribution and wages. The main transformations initiated at the end of the 1970s have involved changes in monetary and fiscal policies and rules, and profound institutional changes in labour market regulations and the role of trade unions. The combination of the high unemployment generated by the changes in macroeconomic policies, and the institutional changes weakening collective wage bargaining and deregulating labour markets have impaired wages growth. According to mainstream economics, such changes in distribution and labour markets institutions should have led to lower unemployment. However, this has not been the case in the Eurozone, neither before nor after the crisis. There is increasing evidence that employment protection legislation has no impact on unemployment rates across countries and periods.
English: http://www.queries-feps.eu/recent-and-long-term-trends-in-income-distribution-and-wages/
The Annual Report on the Human Rights Situation in Croatia in 2014 reveals that the human rights situation did not improve significantly in 2014. Due to the protracted economic crisis, a growing number of people is entering a zone of absolute poverty, while the authorities and politicians are refusing to face that problem or deal with it in a systematic and constructive way.
English: http://dalje.com/en-economy/growing-number-of-people-entering-zone-of-absolute .
The World Employment and Social Outlook of the ILO explores the inter-connected nature of macroeconomic policies on the one hand, and employment and social outcomes on the other. The report analyses which policy combinations are most effective in delivering high employment and balanced incomes. The publication reveals a shift away from the standard employment model, in which workers earn wages and salaries in a dependent employment relationship vis-à-vis their employers, have stable jobs and work full time. In advanced economies, the standard employment model is less and less dominant, whilst the proportion of value added going to wages declines over time, leading to lower wage shares and higher income inequality.
English: http://www.ilo.org/global/research/global-reports/weso/2015-changing-nature-of-jobs ...
Trade union Unite at many workplaces is increasingly using wage negotiations to persuade employers to ensure that no-one they employ earns below the established Living Wage (LW) rates of £9.15 per hour in London and £7.85 in the rest of the country. The persistence of Unite reps that wants all workers to be paid at least the Living Wage, which is the minimum income a worker needs to ensure their basic needs are met, has paid off for five cleaners in Doncaster where four sites, including pet food operators SARVAL, operate as part of the much larger SARIA group that has plants right across the world.
English: http://unitelive.org/living-wage-win-for-saria-cleaners/
The `No Country for Shadow' initiative aims to develop a responsible, active, publicly conscious society and to canvass citizens to help reducing the scope of shadow economy in the country. It is estimated that the shadow economy has shrunk by 0.9 per cent last year. However, it is still a significant obstacle amounting to about a quarter (25 %) of the country's gross domestic product. These funds, if accounted for, could be and should be collected and used in order to improve every citizen's quality of life and overall prosperity.
English: http://www.baltic-course.com/eng/analytics .
A report by the Ghent University concludes that pilots working as either freelancers or under zero-hour contracts create an unsafe situation for the flying public. The report outlines that in many situations, pilots receive little or no sick leave, making many pilots reluctant to take necessary rest. It notes how young pilots are often forced to pay up front in order to fly enough hours to maintain their licenses. Pilots receive nothing if they do not fly, even in cases of schedule changes and cancellation. Under some of the used pilot contracts, a pilot is essentially in debt to his airline and is reimbursed per flight. Worst of all is the situation of pilots entering the labour market. Social legislation is not able to tackle these problems, leaving room for artificial subcontracting chains and social as well as fiscal `engineering'. This race to the bottom leads to a distortion of competition, erosion of workers' rights and serious question marks in the field of safety and liability.
English: https://www.eurocockpit.be/sites/default/files/report_atypical_employment_in_aviation ...
http://www.nltimes.nl/2015/05/18/meps-freelance-zero-hour-airline-pilot-contracts-dangerous/