Unions and management of the Turnhout H.J.Heinz plant agreed on a social plan for the 190 employees that will lose their jobs as the factory closes. Heinz decided to close the profitable factory in Turnhout without any substantial social plan. After the trade unions organised protests in Belgium as well as in Minnesota, the company increased its offer.
English: http://www.iuf.org/w/?q=node/3300
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Imperial Tobacco has outlined plans to close factories in Nottingham, UK and Nantes, France. As many as 900 workers may lose their jobs at the two factories. The production will be transferred to two Polish plants, one at Tarnowo Podgorne near Poznan, and the second in Radom. The group is the fourth biggest cigarette producer on the international market, with brands such as Gauloises Blondes and Lambert and Butler. The trade unions told the BBC that the company made 3.18 billion pounds in profits in 2014, and that the shift to `Eastern Europe' was solely to make even more money.
English: http://www.thenews.pl/1/12/Artykul/168557,Imperial-Tobacco-continues-shift ...
Hours before the start of an all-out strike, SIPTU and the Dublin Street Parking Services (DSPS) management confirmed industrial action had been cancelled and that negotiations were in the final stage. The 50 DSPS workers, responsible for the city's clamps to be put on wrongly parked vehicles, demanded a 2.5% pay rise in 2011 and decided in favour of industrial action in March 2014. Several DSPS offers, including performance-related bonuses were denied by the clampers.
English: http://www.herald.ie/news/no-clamp-break-as-strike-is-called-off ...
After a series of warning strikes that was reported in last month's newsletter, a pay deal was reached for the 2.1 million federal and municipal workers. The agreement includes an immediate 3% pay rise, implemented retrospectively from 1 March 2014, and another 2.5% from 1 March 2015 onwards. As a part of the deal, the first pay hike will be at least €90 for any worker, bringing the effecting pay rise up to 3.3%, in order to afford extra consideration to the lowest paid workers. All workers will also be guaranteed a minimum 30 days of annual leave. Trade union Ver.di had also asked for additional allowances or rest days to compensate for high work pressure and to increase the additional pay rate for night shifts from 15% to 20%, but this was refused by employers.
English: http://www.epsu.org/a/10382
German: http://www.verdi.de/themen/geld-tarif/tarifrunde-oed-2014 ...
Trade union Kommunal and the employers' organisation in the health and social care have reached a collective agreement that will run from 1 April 2014 to 31 March 2016. The deal includes a pay rise across the board of SEK 550 (?60) in 2013 and SEK600 (?66) in 2014. The wage deal was negotiated as a flat rate in order to close the gender pay gap between the male and female dominated industries in the sector. The deal includes higher payments for unsocial hours and an additional month of parental leave. Under the new agreement, minimum wages in the sector will be SEK19,720 (?2170) from 1 April 2014 and SEK20,320 (?2235) as of 1 April 2015 for those aged 19 with a secondary education.
English: http://www.epsu.org/a/10366
Trade union JHL has welcomed the health reformed passed by the Parliament, but added it still has concerns over the situation of employees. The reform that covers social welfare and health care services will see all services are to be delivered by five regional providers, while municipalities retain their responsibility for services and care costs. In the course of the reform many municipal employees are likely to end up with a new employer. JHL has said it is happy with the five year employment guarantee that has been written into the legislation, but will be closely monitoring pay and working conditions.
English: http://www.jhl.fi/portal/en ...
After years of dispute in which trade unions teamed up with their US, UK and Australian counterparts (see June 2012 newsletter), 8000 dockers will regain access to their pension funds. In a long campaign `Put the money back', both trade unions and seaport employers protested against insurance company AEGON pocketing 715 million euro of the workers' pension funds when it took over the old pension firm in 2007. The owners, who sold the old fund Optas, already compensated the fund with a contribution of 500 million, to which AEGON will add a 188 million redemption package.
English: http://www.itfglobal.org/news-online ...
Statistik Austria has published a report that reveals that women are earning on average 23.4% less than men in the country, one of the largest gender wage gaps. The EU average of the gender pay gap was 16.4% in 2012. The Law on Equal Treatment forces employers to publish the average employee wage by occupational groups and gender, which gives women the opportunity to see if they should be earning a higher salary.
English: http://austriantimes.at/news/Business/2014-04-16/50742/Austrian_women ...
German: http://www.statistik.at/web_de/statistiken/soziales/gender-statistik/einkommen ...
Building workers recruited by a German recruitment agency BS Rugovac Bau Gmbh have been exploited on a Dutch building site. They received wages below the legal minimum, contracts in a language they didn't understand and were treated with blackmail tactics to keep them quiet. After they contacted the Spanish embassy the local branch of trade union FNV Bouw managed to get their hourly wages up from €6 to the legal minimum of €8 an hour.
English: http://www.thelocal.es/20140414/spanish-builders-conditions ...
A protest of retail employees with banners reading `Never on Sunday' led to a clash with the riot police. The trade unions said many of the workers protesting had not been paid, some for as long as 15 months, while claiming Sunday opening does not increase a shops' income but promotes `medieval' working conditions.
English: http://greece.greekreporter.com/2014/04/13/shop-staff-and-police-clash-in-athens ...