2015 April epsucob@NEWS 05

Health workers in Northern Ireland are taking part in two weeks of industrial action from 27 April to 10 May in protest at the latest pay deal, lower than for health workers across the rest of the UK, and no pay offer for 2015-2016. The action will involve the withdrawal of additional, voluntary, unpaid and goodwill time. Radiographers and midwives will also be joining the protests, with midwives voting for action for the first time in their history as their colleagues in the rest of the UK did at the end of last year. [Read more at > Unison->http://www.unison.org.uk/news/articles/health

The public services federations - Fp-Cgil, Cisl-Fp and Uil-Pa - are very concerned about government plans to reform and merge various labour inspection services. The unions plan to mobilise workers in the Ministry of Labour and the INPS and INAIL social security and health and safety institutes. The federations argue that effective inspection services are needed more than ever to ensure proper protection at work and to tackle undeclared work. The unions plan to mobilise MPs and regional governors and along with a national protest in Rome there will be actions on 8, 15, 22 and 29 May

The FSP-UGT has just published a detailed report looking at developments in public services over the past four years. "Reduced public services, fewer rights and fewer jobs" provides details on the cuts in services in terms of both quality and coverage that have been the result of policies imposed by the government. Jobs have been slashed across the public sector with nearly 75000 gone from the autonomous regions, 40952 from local government, 41399 from central government and even 27848 from health services when most other countries are increasing employment in health. Public sector workers

The Vision municipal services union has welcomed the decision by the Work Environment Authority to launch an investigation into the working conditions in social services. Mental health problems due to the heavy workload has been identified as an urgent problem with little scope to undertake preventive measures. Vision has produced a number of reports that show that employees in the social services have an unreasonable workload and staff turnover is high and that many social workers look to switch careers. Vision points out that its members have extensive knowledge of how to deal with the

Services union ver.di is in the process of balloting its members in social services on all-out strike action. The union has been trying to negotiate pay improvements for around 240000 workers in various social services such as child care, youth services and care for people with disabilities. Ver.di is arguing that these jobs have been undervalued and the workload, commitment and professionalism of staff needs to be recognised. So far, the regional government employers have failed to come up with any concrete offer, giving only vague indications that they might provide some improvements but

The FOA public services union reports a good turnout by its members in a ballot on the recently negotiated agreements. More than half of members voted with nine out of 10 supporting the three-year deals, a significantly higher turnout than for the previous agreements in 2013. Municipal workers will get around 5.4% along with other improvements related to pensions, additional paternity leave and new educational initiatives. The overall agreement is thus worth around 6.6%. There is a particular focus on education for our members, including, for example, training for porters, domestic workers

The Federation of Trade Unions has written a letter to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) calling for a softening of the IMF's conditions applied to its financial assistance for the country. The Federation points out that a combination of rising prices and wage arrears has left around 30% of the population below the poverty line. The unions want action to protect the poor and low paid and improved public finances based on a more progressive tax system. The Federation is also calling for a transparent and constructive dialogue with the government and for an agreement with the IMF that

Trade unions in the state sector have effectively pulled out of negotiations over a new collective agreement following a meeting with civil service minister Stef Blok. The unions are looking for a pay increase that would begin to compensate for the pay freeze that has lasted since the previous collective agreement expired over 1600 days ago. The minister could only talk about a possible 1% increase over the next two years but didn't want to make any commitment before knowing about pension contributions. Unions are planning to give the minister an ultimatum calling for proper negotiations or