Estonia
The Estonian Supreme Court has ruled that two Estonian workers employed in Finland should have benefited from local pay and conditions. The two were paid only €8 an hour when local rates were between €10.30 and €11.30. Their employers also refused to pay overtime rates. The ruling is expected to have major implications for other Estonians who are working in Finland.
Read more at > YLE news website (EN)
The GPA-DJP trade union has called on the Red Cross to negotiate over how to pay money owed to around 200 workers. For many years the Red Cross’s blood donation service has made errors in it wage calculations, failing to pay the correct overtime payments and other allowances. It is estimated that the 200 workers are owed around €2 million. The union says that the Red Cross is trying to resolve the issue through individual discussions with workers, giving them a tight deadline to accept offers of payment below what they are really entitled to. [Read more at > GPA-DJP (DE)->http://www.gpa-djp.at
A survey by the JHL public sector trade union found that most people thought that public sector workers in a range of low-paid occupations were underpaid. The 10 occupations used in the survey were mainly those where the majority of workers are women and the survey supported an average pay rise of €217 for these workers. Actual figures for basic pay and average pay for these workers revealed that most relied on large amounts of additional pay to supplement basic pay, with additional pay the equivalent of 30% of basic pay in the case of nurses. [Read more at > Trade Union News (EN)->http://www
A regional labour court ruling means that care workers can claim the minimum wage for their on-call hours. The particular case involved a care worker on a two-week rota of shifts providing round-the-clock care for two sisters suffering from dementia. She had to sleep on the premises and was paid less than the minimum wage for the care sector (€8.50) for those periods when she was not working but still on-call. Read more at > ver.di (DE)
