Italy
The public service federations - Fp-Cgil, Cisl-FP and Uil-Pa - are continuing their campaign to defend employees and services in the face of the restructuring of the Red Cross. They have been looking for guarantees on services, employment levels and wages and have planned a series of mobilisations to put pressure on the government, including a national demonstration in Rome on 11 May.
Read more at > Fp-Cgil (IT)
Members of the ver.di trade union at the Red Cross training institute in Berlin are on strike for higher pay and to ensure that old and new employees are on the same pay scale. The institute provides vocational training for workers with mental disabilities. The employers have not increased pay for 11 years and ver.di is calling for increases to bring pay levels in line with those in the main public sector agreements. The employers want the strike to end before any further negotiations take place but ver.di wants to see an offer of a significant pay increase first and one that begins to bring
Trade unions organising in the Red Cross (FP CGIL, FP CISL, UIL and CISAL) have managed to secure an agreement on supplementary payments that protects employees' purchasing power over the last two years. Although bargaining over basic pay is still frozen, unions ensured that the Red Cross used additional funds to cover pay rather than allocated on other areas of spending. The unions have also ensured that they will be involved in negotiations over the process of transforming the organisation into a private association with particular concerns for application of the national agreement and
The four trade unions - FP-CGIL, CISL-Fp, Uil-Pa and Fialp-CISAL - organised a demonstration outside the Chamber of Deputies on 17 October calling for a delay in implementing legislation affecting the Red Cross. The unions are worried that the proposed change of status of the organisation from a public entity to one covered by private law will leave workers vulnerable to job cuts and changes to pay and conditions. The unions want a year's postponement to enable them to negotiate to protect the 4000 Red Cross employees. [Read more at > CISL-FP (IT)->http://www.fp.cisl.it/] [And at > FP-CGIL (IT
