Collective Bargaining

After the parliament, on its own initiative, voted a 50% wage increase for teachers, which the unions insist should be applied from 1 October 2008, the government sought to postpone it until 1 April 2009, thus provoking industrial unrest. President Traian Basescu now finally has announced legislation to implement this award. Most recently the government, facing parliamentary elections on 30 November 2008, says it has reached an outline agreement with employers and trade unions on future pay policy in the public sector.
(English: Watson Wyatt Data Services, New Industrial Relations Europe, 11/2008)

The government has confirmed to raise the national minimum wage by 9.8% to SKK 8,902 (Euro 266) per month from 1 January 2009, using the legislative amendment it passed earlier in 2008. That establishes the formula for calculating increases when those cannot be agreed between employers and unions. The minimum hourly rate will also go up by 9.8% to SKK 51.15 (Euro 1.53) (See also this Collective Bargaining Newsletter Year 1 No.'s 6 and 7).
(English: Watson Wyatt Data Services, New Industrial Relations Europe, 11/2008)

The CITUB and Podkrepa union confederations have decided to pull out of the National Council for Tripartite Cooperation, as a protest against what they claim is the government's persistent failure to honour its commitments and in support for demands for "honest pay". The two confederations warned that ordinary workers must not be left bearing the brunt alone for the global financial crisis. They are demanding a tangible increase in the national minimum wage (CITUB earlier called for a 18.2% hike from 1 January 2009) and 20% pay rises in the public sector. (See also this Collective Bargaining Newsletter Year 1 No.'s 7 and 8).
(English: Watson Wyatt Data Services, New Industrial Relations Europe, 11/2008; http://www.bnr.bg/RadioBulgaria/Emission_English/News/1211-B17.htm, via http://www.labourstart.org/cgi-bin/show_news.pl?country=Bulgaria)

Services union ver.di has joined with the German catholic charity federation (Deutches Caritasverband) in calling for a minimum wage for the care sector. Ver.di executive member Ellen Paschke said that care workers should not be left without protection against market forces and Helmut Kohmann from the employer federation argued that the minimum for the sector should not be anything less than the current minimum salary set by the public sector agreement.
Ver.di and NGG, the food workers' union, have announced a new campaign aimed at securing the introduction of a national statutory minimum wage, to be set initially at Euro 7.50 per hour. The drive is due to reach its peak on the eve of the federal general elections scheduled for September 2009. The two unions refer to a representative survey concluding that 72% of the voters believe a statutory minimum wage should become a major election issue.
(English: http://www.epsu.org/cob/273; Watson Wyatt Data Services, New Industrial Relations Europe, 11/2008;
German: http://presse.verdi.de/pressemitteilungen/showNews?id=568dbb62-a68c-11dd-4ce2-0019b9e321e1; http://mindestlohn.verdi.de/data/pressemitteilung.pdf)

Talks between the three major union confederations and employer association Confindustria about changes in the collective bargaining system have come to a standstill. Following the presentation of amended employer proposals, the CGIL confederations declared the negotiations "have lost all meaning" and are therefore at an end so far CGIL is concerned. The other confederations, CSIL and UIL, remain hopeful that concrete results still can be achieved. The main points of disagreement are the length of industry agreements and the replacement of government's price inflation forecasts by those from another source.
(English: Watson Wyatt Data Services, New Industrial Relations Europe, 11/2008)

The public sector seems to be heading for a major clash over pay increases for 2009. The unions are demanding a general norm of 15.9% for awards, with a similar increase in national minimum wage rates, currently HUF 69,900 (Euro 272) per month. The government, however, says it intends to freeze all wages under its direct control, and heads of state companies are being urged to take a similar line. The public service unions have renewed the statutes of their combined strike committee, declaring that the proposed austerity measures are unacceptable (See also this Collective Bargaining Newsletter Year 1 No.'s 7 and 8).
(English: Watson Wyatt Data Services, New Industrial Relations Europe, 11/2008ÿ; http://www.budapesttimes.hu/content/view/9829/27/)

The major union confederation ZSSS has made a plea for a substantial hike in the national minimum wage. The federation expresses its target in net rather than gross terms, setting it at Euro 500 per month. The present gross minimum rate, which has stood at Euro 589.11 per month, yields take-home pay of around Euro 426; thus the unions' envisaged increase amounts to 17.4%. By formulating its target as a net sum, the ZSSS is implying that the full cost of the uplift should not necessarily fall on employers and that the government could chip in with concessions on personal income tax.
(English: Watson Wyatt Data Services, New Industrial Relations Europe, 11/2008; http://www.sta.si/en/vest.php?s=a&id=1333233)

A large majority of union members accepted the collective agreement agreed on 30 October by the IG BCE union and the rubber employers' association, covering 30,000 workers. The 15-month agreement, backdated from 1 September to 30 November 2009, calls for a wage increase of 2.5% by 1 November. On 1 July, another increase of 1.3% will be put into effect. The yearly training allowance is increased by Euro 25 per worker, effective on 1 January 2009. The rubber employers have committed Euro 4 million to the Association of Employment Promotion (VzB), which assures a flexible transition to retirement.
(English: http://www.icem.org/en/78-ICEM-InBrief/?date=2008-11-17#2848)

After months of dispute at the Sellafield nuclear energy site, members of the Unite and GMB unions voted to accept a pay offer of the British Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA). In mid-September members of the Prospect union accepted a 2.5% pay increase plus a 2.5% bonus. During October, Unite and GMB members were engaged in limited industrial action, strictly performing work in their own job classifications. Now these members voted by a three-to-one margin to accept similar terms. They received four months back pay, and two separate bonus schemes of UKP 600 each. An added incentive in the negotiated proposal was a UKP 1,500 "goodbye bonus" as the NDA prepares to sell its nuclear assets to Nuclear Management Partners, a consortium of French, American and British energy interests.
(English: http://www.icem.org/en/78-ICEM-InBrief/?date=2008-11-17#2847)

The IG Metall union and employers' association Gesamtmetall have reached a 18-month pilot agreement in the engineering sector for the bargaining region of Baden-Wrttemberg. It includes a pay increase of 4.2% to be entered into the pays scales: 2.1% from 1 February 2009, with an additional increase of 2.1% from 1 May 2009. There will be a one-off payment of Euro 510 to cover the period from 1 November 2008 until 31 January 2009, and an additional lump-sum payment of Euro 122 in September 2009. In negotiations with the works council, management can decide to push back the second 2.1% increase by up to seven months. The agreement ends on 30 April 2010.
It is expected that union branches in the rest of Germany will quickly ratify the deal as well; if so, it will finally cover 3.6 million workers. The IG Metall president, Berthold Huber, said that "the result will not put us in a state of euphoria", but that it combines income security for the workers with planning security for employers, a defendable outcome in the actual situation. (See also this Collective Bargaining Newsletter Year 1 No.'s 7 and 8).
(English: IG Metall information via EUCOBAN network of European Metalworkers' Federation; http://www.imfmetal.org/main/index.cfm?n=47&l=2&c=18579; German: http://www.igmetall.de/cps/rde/xchg/SID-0A456501-D3FB2454/internet/style.xsl/view_4508_4525.htm?seitenid=483)