Collective bargaining committee backs deal worth 3.5%
4 March 2010
Workers in federal and local government will be asked to vote on a new collective agreement that was accepted by ver.di’s collective bargaining committee. Ver.di says that overall the deal is worth 3.5%. There is a 1.2% pay increase backdated to 1 January 2010 and then there will be two increases in 2011 – 0.6% on 1 January and 0.5% on 1 August. There will also be a €240 lump sum paid on 1 January 2011. The union’s assessment is that this is a reasonable agreement bearing in mind the difficult economic and financial situation. The agreement also includes provisions for apprentices to be taken on for 12 months after their training and measures related to part-time work for older workers.
Read more at > ver.di (DE)
Swedish union backs ver.di over Vattenfall protests
4 March 2010
The German subsidiary of the Swedish state-owned power company Vattenfall is claiming that is has to make savings of €180 million. Energy union ver.di organised a protest march on 3 March against the company’s plans that could lead to 1500 job cuts. The company also wants to outsource some of its services with the prospect that workers will be covered by poorer collective agreements with the risk that some will lose €8000-€10000 a year in income. Swedish energy union SEKO has expressed its support for the German colleagues and has criticised Vattenfall’s plans when it made €1.8 billion in profits in Germany last year.
Read more at > ver.di (DE)
And at > SEKO (SE)
And at > EPSU (EN)
Court ruling disappoints union
4 March 2010
Ver.di has expressed its disappointment that the labour court in Bielefeld has ruled that the special status of church organisations means that their employees do not have the right to strike. The church employers took the issue to court following strike action by ver.di members last year that put pressure on church organisations to accept a new collective agreement. The union hopes that Germany’s main constitutional court will take a different approach and rule that the special status of church employment does not undermine workers’ right to strike.
Read more at > ver.di (DE)
Ver.di calls for arbitration
15 February 2010
After the third round of negotiations produced no further offer from the local and federal government employers, the ver.di public services union has called for arbitration to try to make progress. The union says that the 120,000 union members who took part in the recent sequence of warning strikes have made it clear that they want a reasonable offer from the employers in response to the union’s demand for a pay and conditions package worth around 5%. Strike action will be suspended during the period of arbitration.
Read more at > ver.di (DE)
Delegates debate key energy collective bargaining issues
15 February 2010
Around 300 delegates of the ver.di services union met in Hannover earlier this month to discuss collective bargaining priorities in the energy sector. They are facing a challenging bargaining environment with employers pushing for pay freezes. Other issues include the spread of outsourcing and poorer collective agreements, the growth of precarious employment and employer reluctance to guarantee jobs for apprentices.
Read more at > EPSU (EN)
Union organises warning strikes in local and federal government
4 February 2010
The ver.di service union has organised warning strikes to demonstrate to the local and federal government employers that workers in the sector want a reasonable pay offer. So far the employers have rejected ver.di’s demands in terms of both pay and other conditions. They are also refusing to reintroduce promotion opportunities that were suspended in 2005 at the time of the introduction of a new pay agreement. The 2005 agreement included a new pay structure but full implementation of this has not been negotiated and so the union is calling for at least the possibility of career progression. Ver.di’s overall demands in terms of pay and conditions are worth around 5%. The next round of negotiations are due to start on 10 February.
Read more at > ver.di (DE)
Church employees show growing dissatisfaction over pay and conditions
4 February 2010
Public services union ver.di reports that there is increasing discontent among church employees over the failure of the Evangelical Church to negotiate collective agreements to cover its 150,000 workers who work mainly in health and social services. Recent years have seen no pay increases and employees argue that there is not a fair distribution of representation on the committee that deals with employment issues. Ver.di is calling for a collective agreement to cover the church employees that would help re-connect them to the pay and conditions that apply in the health and social services sector and wider public sector agreements.
Read more at > ver.di (DE)
Call for solidarity between civil servants and public employees
21 January 2010
The DGB confederation and ver.di have joined in responding to claims that civil servants are a privileged group of workers. They point out that civil servants in the Berlin region, for example, are effectively paid no more than they were in 2003 as a result of cuts to Christmas and holiday payments. Far from being privileged, according to the DGB and ver.di, civil servants such as teachers have to move to stay in work while the emergency services are on-call at all hours of the day. Civil servants also have no right to strike. The key issue for ver.di and the DGB is that , in the lead up to pay negotiations for federal and local government workers, that there needs to be solidarity between civil servants and public employees and they should not be played off against each other.
Read more at > ver.di (DE)
Government agrees to waste sector minimum wage
6 January 2010
Ver.di has welcomed the government’s decision to implement a minimum wage of €8.02 an hour in the waste sector. The union had been concerned that the new coalition, involving the FDP liberal party, that came to power last year would not fulfil the commitment of the previous government to introduce a minimum wage for the sector. However, federal employment minister Ursula von der Leyen signed the regulation in December so that it would come into effect in January. Ver.di estimates that around 20,000 workers are likely to be better off with some having been employed on wages as low as €4 an hour.
Read more at > ver.di (DE)
Hospital workers want to plug gaps in collective agreement
6 January 2010
With negotiations set to begin over the main public sector agreement (federal and local government) members of ver.di in the hospital sector want to make sure their demands are dealt with. The union has been getting members involved in discussing the key demands by sending out questionnaires about the main issues. For example, unlike the rest of federal and local government, hospitals and old people’s homes are not covered by rules that take account of breaks in working time. This is the equivalent of 14 days a year and this extra time off would help hospital workers cope with increasing workloads.
Read more at > ver.di (DE)
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