Recruitment & organising, Local government, Youth, EWCs
ETUC celebrates 50 years at Berlin Congress
A large EPSU delegation joined hundreds of other trade unionists from across Europe to celebrate 50 years of struggle for Europe’s workers and people. We ended the ETUC Congress with the election of a new team and the adoption of an action plan titled ‘Together for a Fair Deal for Workers in Europe’.
Organising Young Workers: a new report and online interactive workshops
Last week, EPSU held two online, interactive workshops for the EPSU Youth Network and the Recruitment and Organising Network, on one of the most important topic for the future of our unions – organising young workers.
5% for library workers but no agreement in central government
Workers in public libraries are set to get a 5% pay increase in a new collective agreement running from 1 July 2020 to 1 July 2021. A 3% pay rise will be backdated to 1 January and a further 2% increase will follow in January 2021. There will also be an overtime bonus for part-time workers, abolition of youth pay rates and limits on use of temporary contracts. However, the additional payment for Sunday work will be reduced and unions are unhappy about limited notice of rosters. Meanwhile unions have rejected a pay offer for central government workers arguing that a 0.7% pay increase and € 225
Social care workers call on strengthening the workforce perspective in the transition from institutional to community-based care
This article summarises the main topics addressed at the meeting of the EPSU Working Group Social Services on 26 February, with one focus on the transition from institutional care to community-based care and how to make this transition also work for the social care and health workforce.
Young workers building EPSU
Members of EPSU's young workers' network were active at the federation's Quality Employment conference last week, chairing debates and putting together a panel to discuss the key issues they are trying to address. Zahra Yusifli from Azerbaijan and Sven De Guise from Belgium chaired the discussions on digitalisation and low pay, while Zahra was also involved in the young workers' panel with Joe O'Connor from Ireland and Judit Zsigo from Hungary. They underlined the need for trade unions to look at how they communicated with young workers and what they were doing not just recruit them but also
Pay boost for health and social care assistants
The FOA public services union has very much welcomed the significant increases to pay for health and social care assistants and trainees as a result of the recently negotiated public sector collective agreements. While all workers will benefit from the the overall 8.1% increase over three years, specific increases set out in the agreements will mean that health and social service assistants will see increases of 13% over the period and trainees will get pay rises of between 14% and 19%. The union believes these are important steps in revaluing low paid jobs in the sector and also making the
Unions push for pay equity for new entrants
Public service unions, including Fórsa and SIPTU, have met with the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform for discussions on dealing more rapidly with the problem of pay equity for new entrants to the public service. In the pay changes implemented as part of austerity measures in 2011, two additional points were added to the first two pay grades for new starters. This means that they need two more years to reach the top of their pay grades compared to higher grades. The unions argue that with economic growth and higher tax revenues, it should be possible to tackle this issue in advance
