2010 April epsucob@NEWS 09

With pay negotiations underway, president of the Kommunal municipal workers’ union, Ylva Thorn, has called on local government employer organisations SKL and SALAR to put words into action and tackle the gender pay gap. Writing in the Dagbladet national newspaper, Thorn argues that employees working in female-dominated professions face higher levels of part-time work, job insecurity, work-related ill health and above all lower pay. She points out that with average pay at SEK 20750 (€2150) local authority workers, the vast majority of them women, are among the lowest paid among workers

A new 12-month collective agreement has been negotiated in the energy sector with a 1.1% pay increase from 1 June 2010. There will also be a lump sum payment worth 0.4% of annual salary to be paid in January 2011 into a so-called benefit budget. This is for employees to use according to their personal preference and so could provide greater working time flexibility or taken as salary. The agreement also included provisions on training and initiatives to take on young unemployed workers. From next year there will be two separate negotiations for two collective agreements. This acknowledges that

As part of a joint project with European employer organisations, the ETUC is involved in a survey on flexicurity. The questionnaire has been sent to trade union confederations and so if any EPSU affiliates want to influence the responses from their country they will need to contact their trade union confederation. The survey asks about the main national measures and trends; the role of the social partners in initiating and influencing policy and practice on the main components of the flexibility and security agenda; and overall opinions on flexicurity. [Read more at > EPSU (EN)->http://www

The FOA public services union has attacked the decision by some hospitals to cut jobs because of increased productivity. The union argues that hospital workers have been successful in treating more patients than ever before but the outcome for many is redundancy. FOA also points out the decisions by individual hospitals effectively contradict government policy that has targeted reductions in jobs in the municipalities over the next couple of years in order to provide more health sector jobs. [Read more at > FOA (DK)->http://www.foa.dk/Forbund/Presse.aspx?newsid={59EB06F3-54FA-4347-B551

Public service unions have made clear that they are unhappy about government proposals to change the pension age and calculation. The CGT local government federation wants to retain the right to retire at 60 and for a pension worth 75% of salary after a full career. It also called on the government to organise negotiations involving all the public service federations. FO’s civil service federation has attacked the conclusions of a report from the Pensions Advisory Council. The federation challenges some of the assumptions it has used in the Council’s forecasts, claiming that it has tried to

Trade unions representing around 100,000 employees in the state sector have set out their main demands for this year’s collective bargaining round. Equal pay is a key element with a call for 0.25% of the wage bill to be set aside to deal with the 8% gender pay gap. YS Stat is arguing for workers to be put on a higher pay grade when they return from parental leave to ensure that time away from work doesn’t impact on their progression up the pay scale. Unions are also concerned to keep up with pay in the private sector, where average pay is around NOK 11200 (€1420) higher than in the public

The SGB/USS trade union confederation has drafted a policy calling for a national minimum wage that it will put to delegates at a meeting on 17 May. The confederation argues that too many workers are not covered by collective agreements. Even though collective agreements can be extended, there are some sectors without collective agreements at all and so this would still leave many workers without pay protection. The union wants a national minimum wage of CHFR 22 (€15) an hour, with the Cantons (regional governments) having the right to implement higher minimum wages if they want to. [Read more

A three-day strike by street cleaners in the Hague went ahead on 28 April despite attempts by the municipality to get the strike banned. The local authority tried to argue that the strike would raise safety issues but union lawyers were able to refer to much longer strikes in the past which had not posed a risk to safety. The dispute over pay between the unions and the VNG local authority employers’ has still not been resolved but there is now the prospect that talks will resume shortly. The unions have called on the employers to offer a deal in line with the social accord agreed in the

Hundreds of women working as cleaners and care assistants have won an equal pay case against Birmingham City Council, the biggest municipality in the country. The Emploment Tribunal agreed with the union’s case that the women had been unfairly denied bonuses that were paid to gardeners, refuse collectors and gravediggers, who are overwhelmingly male workers. The local authority has the right to appeal against the decision. [Read more at > UNISON (EN)->http://www.unison.org.uk/asppresspack/pressrelease_view.asp?id=1848 ] [And at > GMB (EN)->http://www.gmb.org.uk/newsroom/latest_news/gmb_wins

The ST state sector union reports that in some parts of the civil service employers have taken a tough line on individual pay and are refusing to agree increases. There are no general pay increases in the state sector. The union says that some employers appear to be rejecting individual increases even when there is evidence of adequate performance that would normally warrant a pay rise. There is an auditing process to assess the fairness of pay awards and ST is continuing discussions with employers to resolve the disagreements. [Read more at > ST (SV)->http://www.st.org/om-st/organisation/sts

EPSU’s working group on collective bargaining in the energy sector in Central and Western Europe met for the sixth time on 21 April to discuss the latest developments in negotiations and to look at updated information on wages and profits in some of the main European energy transnational companies. On 23 April the VDSZSZ Hungarian energy union organised a meeting with Czech, Slovak and Slovenian unions to discuss a range of issues including collective bargaining developments in the respective countries. [Read more at > EPSU (EN)->http://www.epsu.org/a/6456] [And at > EPSU (EN)->http://www.epsu