Negotiations on equality/diversity agreement have started in Suez Environment

(3 July 2014) As result of the signing of the agreement establishing the European Works Committee of SUEZ ENVIRONMENT on 4 July 2013 and as part of the implementation of the transposition arrangements in the company GDF Suez, SUEZ Environment and the EWC have started negotiations on an equality and diversity agreement on 24 June 2014.
To guarantee the representativity of SUEZ ENVIRONMENT, this EWC includes 18 European representatives, including representatives from the European Trade Union Federation EPSU.

From France 5 representatives: two representatives CGT, CFDT representative 1, with 1 representing FO and 1 representative CFE-CGC; From Europe: 1 representative per country of Germany, Belgium, Finland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Czech Republic, United Kingdom, Slovakia and Sweden, and finally from Spain two representatives.

The discussions of this first negotiation round focused on the preamble, the scope of the agreement, notably to extend the agreement to general anti-discrimination matters and have a larger scope on diversity. A matter of concern to the trade union delegation was the position of the management on extended salaries related to profit-redistribution and individual salaries based on performance, which were more often subject to discrimination for women in some subsidiary companies of SUEZ. The management also failed to provide up-to date qualitative data on social and professional indicators.

The next round of negotiations will take place in Paris on 4 September and on 2 October 2014.