Collective Bargaining

The National Union of Journalists (NUJ), Unite and Bectu organised a strike at broadcasting company BBC against compulsory redundancies. The unions are particularly enraged that compulsory redundancies are being executed, while the corporation is advertising vacancies in other fields. The redundancies are part of the former BBC director's programme `Delivering Quality First', which according to the unions are so far reaching that they endanger the quality of the news. Unions are demanding a six month moratorium on the cuts from the new BBC director. In these six months, the unions want to assess the consequences of the cuts on the quality of the news.
English: http://www.ifj.org/en/articles/ifj-backs-nuj-strike-over-job-cuts-and-future-of-bbc
http://www.nuj.org.uk/innerPagenuj.html?docid=2815

Teachers and child care workers began their nationwide public sector strike when staff from nearly 100 schools in Berlin went out on the street. The warning action is part of a wage dispute in which the teachers insist, among others, for a 6.5% salary rise. The trade union Ver.di is also campaigning for a guarantee of €100 more per month for some 800,000 public sector employees.
English: http://www.neurope.eu/article/german-teachers-begin-nationwide-strike http://www.thelocal.de/education/20130218-48025.html

Collective bargaining in the public sector covers approximately 800,000 employees in the state, regions and municipalities. Of these, about 410,000 are members of the LO affiliated unions. After the signature of a framework agreement the negotiations started for the different levels. Despite the difficult economic situation an agreement could be reached with the Ministry of Finance for the next two years' salary and working conditions of all national public sector workers. Negotiations at the level of the municipalities were concluded a week later with a consensus on the broad framework for the more than 500,000 municipal employees' salaries in the next two years. The deal includes a general wage increase of 1.97% over two years, complimented with an additional 0.25% increase for employees within certain areas.
English: http://cphpost.dk/news/national/public-workers-handed ...

In a survey carried out by the daily newspaper Eesti P„evaleht, a considerably high number of Estonians expressed their wish to leave the country. Due to unfavourable labour market and working conditions, almost 37% of the Estonians consider leaving their home country. Most respondents complained about the low wages and the bad working conditions.
English: http://news.err.ee/society ...

The ARD television channel made the allegation in a documentary the online shopping giant Amazon employed security guards with neo-Nazi connections to intimidate its foreign workers. More than 5,000 temporary staff from across Europe works at Amazon's German packing and distribution centres. ARD said the temporary staff worked eight-hour shifts packing goods at the company's logistics centres in Bad Hersfeld, Konstanz and Augsburg. Many walked up to 17 kilometres per shift and all those taken on could be fired at will. On arrival, most were told their pay had been cut to below the rate promised when they applied for jobs at Amazon. According to a spokesman of trade union Ver.di the workers did not complain because they were all too frightened of being sent home without a job. In the meantime the case has led to investigations from the side of the Ministry of Labour and Amazon has terminated the cooperation with the agency that operated under the name H.E.S.S. The Austrian-based agency Trenkwalder that was involved as intermediate risks to lose its licence in Germany.
English: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/amazon-used-neonazi-guards ...
German: http://diepresse.com/home/wirtschaft/international/1346090/Dumpingloehne ...

The teachers' trade union PDSZ will announce a national strike for an unspecified period after March 15 because talks with the government on the reform of education have failed. According to PDSZ, 66% of the teachers and two-thirds of the public consider the government's education reform unacceptable.
English: http://www.politics.hu/20130218/teachers-union-vows-national-strike ...

Representatives of employees at Iberia have announced they will be holding three five-day strikes in February and March to protest against large scale layoffs that have been announced. As reported in the November-December newsletters, Iberia's mother company, the International Airlines Group, has made known it intends to lay off 4,500 people, amounting to 23% of the staff. After talks with management broke down, unions have now announced strike. The strikes will take place from 18 to 22 February, 4 to 8 and 18 to 22 March. Both cabin crew and ground personnel participated massively in the first of the three five-day strikes, grounding hundreds of flights and affecting over 70,000 travels.
English: http://www.itfglobal.org/news-online/index.cfm ...
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/02/18/uk-iberia-strike ...

According to Professor James Vaupel of the University of Southern Denmark shorter days and longer careers lead to more leisure time and a healthier old age. He says that no-one should work more than 25 hours per week, but that we should keep working until the age of 80. Shorter working weeks would give young people more time to care for their families, exercise and lead healthier lives and part-time work later in life would improve the general health of the elderly.
English: http://cphpost.dk/business/researcher-advocates-25-hour-working-week ...

New figures published by the Public Employment Service show that 19,000 temporary jobs disappeared from the labour market in 2012. More than half of those in work aged 15-24 do so under temporary contracts. The office sees the figures as an indication that unemployment continues to hit young workers the hardest. Youth unemployment is high and also disproportionately higher even prior to the 2008-2010 crisis.
English: http://www.thelocal.se/46242/20130217/

A group of protesters, led by the movement Occupy Croatia, gathered on Zagreb's main square to `defend the good of the country' and protest over the country's privatisation, in particular its banks.
English: http://www.croatiaweek.com/croats-hit-the-streets-in-protest/