2013 December epsucob@NEWS 19

Workers who move to another EU country may soon benefit from new rules to protect their supplementary pension rights. The European Parliament and member state negotiators reached agreement on 26 November after deadlock in the European Council for six years. State pension rights are already secured under EU law. However, equivalent protection for supplementary pension schemes, i.e. occupational pensions financed or co-financed by employers, has not been established until now. Under the new rules, the "vesting period", i.e. the period of active membership of a scheme needed for a person to keep

The KESK public services confederation ways it will organise a national day of strike action on 19 December unless the government responds to its demands in relation to the Budget for 2014. The confederation is highly critical of the government's policies on labour law and outsourcing of public services. It argues that public service workers face low pay and precarious working conditions made worse by the extensive sub-contracting of many services. The confederation is call for a TL 300 (€108) pay rise for civil servants, along with improvements to pensions and action to defend the position of

Members of public services union UNISON and the general workers' union Unite are involved in another day of strike action on 3 December alongside their colleagues from the lecturers' unions UCU and EIS. The union action is in response to the higher education employers' failure to make any improvement to their 1% pay offer. The previous strike day was on 31 October. The unions calculate that five years of pay offers below the cost of living mean workers losing between £663 (€800) and £3,574 (€4316). [Read more at > UNISON->http://www.unison.org.uk/news/articles/he-meeting-with-employers] [And

Three EPSU affiliates have come together to work on a European Commission funded project that will examine how social dialogue and collective bargaining can improve the efficiency of public services. FSP-UGT from Spain, FP-CGIL from Italy and SINTAP from Portugal will collaborate on the project that will look at issues of responsibility, trust, participation and cooperation and will focus in particular on the effectiveness of the public sector particularly in the face of the continuing press to privatise and outsource services. [Read more at > FSP-UGT (ES)->http://www.fspugt.es/El_proyecto

EPSU letterEPSU has sent a letter to the Croatian president expressing its support for the SLSN state and local government trade union which is concerned about draft legislation on pensions and retirement age in the public sector. The legislation will mean that the government can terminate contracts when civil servants reach 65 or 35 years of qualifying service. The union is worried that the government will use the new rules to force women to retire as part of a strategy to cut 12000 jobs from the civil service. In its letter EPSU highlights the importance of gender equality and particularly

Local government union STAL, along with other unions in the public sector Frente Comum, is continuing its campaign against the austerity measures being imposed by the government. It was involved in major day of action on 26 November. The union will also step up its campaign for a 35-hour week and against the five-hour increase to 40 hours imposed by the government and recently endorsed by the Constitutional Court. [See images of the day of action at > STAL (PT)->http://www.stal.pt/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1347&Itemid=1] [And the press release on the Court decision (PT)->http:/

EPSU will be involved in new project investigating pay and conditions in the social care sector. The project, WICARE, will be similar to the earlier project WISUTIL which focused on pay and conditions in energy, waste and water. WICARE will cover 30 countries and EPSU affiliates will be asked to encourage their members in social care to complete an online survey. The survey will be on national Wage Indicator websites in national languages and the responses will be analysed by researchers at the AIAS institute at the University of Amsterdam. Researchers at CELSI, based in Bratislava, will also

A new report from the Kommunal municipal workers' union reveals the increasing demands being placed on workers providing care for the elderly who find themselves so overworked with so many staff shortages that they don't have enough time for breaks. The union warns that staffing levels are often so low that they put elderly people at risk. Kommunal is calling for minimum staffing levels on the basis of full-time, permanent workers with appropriate levels of training who can guarantee continuity of care. The current situation is so bad that is driving many workers away from the service. [Read

Several public sector trade union organisations are coordinating a week of action on pay in December (9-13). The unions and federations - CFDT, CFTC, CGC, CGT, FAFPT, FSU, Solidaires et UNSA - are protesting about the freezing of pay as of 1 July 2010 and the extension of this freeze until 2014. The unions say that there are major problems withe the pay system and career development while years of austerity and low or no pay increases have left around one in five public sector workers on not much more than the minimum wage. [Read more at > CGT (FR)->http://www.spterritoriaux.cgt.fr/spip.php

The DGB trade union confederation has reacted positively to a number of the measures included in the agreement to establish a ruling coalition between the CDU/CSU centre rights parties and the social democrats (SPD). The introduction of a statutory minimum wage at €8.50 an hour from 1 January 2015 is one of the main elements endorsed by the confederation, although it is not so happy about the rate being frozen until 2018. The DGB is also pleased that there are proposals to facilitate the extension of collective agreements and to open up the scope of the posted workers' legislation to all