Collective Bargaining

On 6 November, the PRO-GE union signed a new collective agreement, covering about 165,000 workers in the metalworking and mining industry and resulting in substantial pay increases. This result was reached in the third round after a 17-hour marathon negotiation, and was achieved due to pressure on the employers' side after nationwide works council conferences and some 400 staff meetings. The agreement includes an increase in minimum wages by 2.5%; an increase in effectively paid wages by 2.3% with a minimum pay rise of €45 (resulting in lower wage groups gaining increases up to 3%), and a new collectively agreed gross minimum wage of €1,515.84. The new agreement takes effect from November 1, 2010 and the deadline for renewal is 12 months.
English: http://www.eucoban.eu/EMF/Reports/Conclusion-of-bargaining-round .
German: http://www.proge.at/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=P01/Page .

Initiated by the DGB union confederation and its affiliates, on 13 November tens of thousands of protestors took to the streets of several German cities, marching against what they see as unfair social policies espoused by the coalition government of Chancellor Angela Merkel. Spokespersons of the DGB said nearly 100,000 people marched in Stuttgart, Dortmund, Nuremberg and Erfurt to voice their disapproval with the Merkel government. The demonstrations coincided with the start of the CDU, Merkel's party, annual congress. "We don't want a republic in which powerful interest groups decide the guidelines of politics with their money, their power and their influence," Berthold Huber, chairman of IG Metall, told demonstrators in Stuttgart.
English: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6AC21M20101113

Public sector unions are preparing for negotiations in the municipal sector where the three-year agreement is due to expire on 31 March 2011. The FOA union has been arguing for a flat-rate pay increase rather than a percentage increase, in order to provide more help for the lowest paid. Discussions between the unions are continuing but it appears that the flat-rate amount will apply to the 60,000 workers who are on or below level 17 of the pay scale (just below DKK 20,000 or €2,700 a month).
English: http://www.epsu.org/cob/387
Danish: http://www.foa.dk/Forbund/Presse?newsid= ...

The FSC-CCOO and FSP-UGT public service federations have welcomed a ruling by the High Court that the imposition of pay cuts may have contravened constitutional rights to freedom of association and collective bargaining. The case also raises issues of equal treatment as the pay cut was imposed at the Royal Spanish Mint but not in other public companies such as the RENFE railways. The particular legal challenge relates to employees of the Royal Mint but if the result is confirmed then it may well be applicable much more broadly across publicly owned companies and even across the public sector.
English: http://www.epsu.org/cob/387
Spanish:http://www.fspugt.es/Parece_que_la_Audiencia_Nacional_a_va_elevar ...

On 1 November government, employers and trade unions finally reached an agreement on the reform of the country's pension system, ending a month of negotiations. The reform stipulates an increase, starting from 1 January 2010, by four months in the number of work experience years needed for full retirement benefits so that by 2020, men would need 40 years of work experience to retire and women would need 37 years. After January 2021, the retirement age would start increasing by six months to reach 63 years for women and 65 years for men. Trade unions, which were threatening strikes over any increase in the work experience requirement before 2015, said they were pleased with the agreement (See also this Collective Bargaining Newsletter Year 3 October 2010).
English: http://www.sofiaecho.com/2010/11/02/985912_bulgarias ...; http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-11-01/bulgaria-unions-agree ...

The government of Prime Minister Iveta Radicov  is meeting different opinions in realising its intention of making the country's labour law more flexible, and the negotiations over changes that have just begun could easily turn into a lengthy tug-of-war. The trade unions are happy with the law's current form, while the National Union of Employers (RUZ) is demanding that it be made as brief as possible and more flexible. All in all, the current wording of the Labour Code suits the Confederation of Trade Unions (KOZ) and the confederation will resist any substantial changes to it, Otto Ewiak, the spokesman of KOZ, told a Slovakian magazine.
English: http://spectator.sme.sk/articles/view/40616/3/tug_of_war_on_labour_code.html

Workers at the Fos-Lavera oil terminal near Marseille who have been on strike for a month will continue their action until a deal is found with management, the local CGT union spokesman said on Wednesday 27 October. Pascal Galeote, the union spokesman, said contact had not been broken with management, but there were still several issues to be resolved. The protests at Fos-Lavera started on 27 September over working conditions and the planned port reform. They intensified in conjunction with the nationwide strikes over the pension reforms. The Fos-Lavera oil terminal is the world's third-largest and key to the supplying of French refineries.
English: http://af.reuters.com/article/energyOilNews/idAFLDE69Q18W20101027 via http://www.labourstart.org/cgi-bin/show_news.pl?country=France

The long-lasting conflict between TNT Post and the trade unions concerning the dismissal of full-time delivery workers ("postbodes" in Dutch) and their replacement by part-time, lower paid distributing clerks ("postbezorgers") is moving towards a climax. The three unions involved, FNV Abvakabo, CNV Publieke Zaak and BVPP have posed TNT an ultimatum to diminish the number of forced dismissals to under 3,100; if not, a 24-hours' strike will be held in the second week of November. Although the unions earlier succeeded to bring down forced job losses from 4,500 to 3,100, they argue that the speed of restructuring is still too high, with the workload in the TNT distribution centres growing to unacceptable levels. As a number of wildcat strikes has already shown, a new efficiency regime in these centres is said to have spoiled shop-floor relations totally. By contrast, a TNT spokesman argued, "It is inevitable that such things are happening" (See also this Collective Bargaining Newsletter Year 3 June 2010).
Dutch: http://www.fd.nl/artikel/20593311/donderdag-ultimatum-vakbonden-tnt; NRC-Handelsblad, October 27, 2010.

Government, employers and trade unions are in the process of another attempt to finally reach an agreement on the steps to overhaul the country's pension system. Only the increase in social contributions payment by 1.8% percentage-points was agreed during the meeting of the so-called National Council for Tripartite Cooperation on Sunday 17 October. No consensus was reached on the number of years one has to work before drawing a full pension - whether this period starts to increase by four months as of 2013, as the government proposed, or as of 2015, as the trade unions demand. The decision was initially due on Wednesday 27 October, but was further delayed due to the additional information that employers demanded from Finance Minister Simeon Djankov. Earlier, on 7 October, over 10,000 protested in front of the Bulgarian Parliament in Sofia, opposing the government plan to raise the retirement age. The rally was organised by the Confederation of Independent Trade Unions.
English: http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=121265; http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=121541; http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5hSLBagojBVf6_0acsjyYiuWYa7mA?docId=4765413

The Austrian railway company OBB plans mass lay-offs at its Hungarian railway-cargo subsidiary Rail Cargo Hungaria. OBB also plans talks with the Hungarian government regarding track-usage fees. According to reliable sources, austerity plans prepared by OBB could result in lay-offs of 700 to 1,000 employees in 2011, while the dismissal of 460 in the first half of 2011 would already have been decided on. The trade unions have had talks with the Austrian owner, which agreed not to dismiss any employees during the negotiation phase.
English: M t‚ Komiljovics, union correspondent