13 epsucob@NEWS July 2009

Public service trade unions were very disappointed following a meeting with minister Eric Woerth on 25 June. Woerth simply reaffirmed the government’s commit to pay general salary increases of 0.5% (1.7.09) and 0.3% (1.10.09) this year with a further 0.5% next year. Unions have been looking for a much higher overall increase to compensate for several years when pay rises have fallen behind inflation. Woerth said bonuses and other payments would ensure higher increases for civil servants. The union response was to reiterate their call for a general, guaranteed increase rather than

Negotiations between services union ver.di and the VKA local government employers’ organisation broke down with no progress on two key issues. The union wanted a revaluation of jobs in childcare and education in particular, taking account of increased workloads and responsibilities. However, the employers offered only a small increase in salaries that would benefit only one in five workers, while rest would either get nothing or would actually lose out. The VKA also refused to support a new collective agreement that would address the health concerns of education and social workers arising from

Strike action in the energy sector is continuing despite legal threats from employers. Unions are looking for a 5% pay increase but the employers have not budged on the 0.3% paid at the beginning of the year. To highlight their arguments the unions have revealed salary details for directors at the ERdF and GRdF distribution companies where overall executive saw their pay increase by 14% between 2007 and 2008. Strike action at nuclear power stations has continued in the fact of legal threats by employers although EDF decided to withdraw its court action to try to block a call for strike action

Finland’s largest trade union confederation, SAK, is calling for more action to deal with the issue of equal treatment of sexual and gender minorities at work. The confederation argues for the need for wider acceptance of diversity at the workplace and within trade unions in order to achieve real equality. An important part of SAK’s campaign will be to monitor collective agreements and to use the forthcoming bargaining round in the autumn to eradicate any regulations in collective agreements that discriminate against sexual and gender minorities. [Read more at > SAK (EN)->http://www.sak.fi

Public service unions have welcome two key developments that mean that government plans to lay-off thousands of fixed-term workers will be delayed. The final date for discussing the legislation was set as 30 June but this has now been postponed while actual implementation of the measures will now be over the three-year period to 2012 rather than by December 2009. Unions will continue their campaign to protect precarious workers in the public sector and to get them transferred to permanent employment. [Read more at > FP-CGIL (IT)->http://www.fpcgil.it/flex/cm/pages/ServeBLOB.php/L/IT/IDPagina

A draft law that would change the rules on civil servants’ job mobility and career progression is being debated in the National Assembly a year after being passed by the Senate. Unions are very worried about the implications of the legislation which they say will make it easier for public sector employers to make civil servants redundant during a restructuring and to make more use of fixed-term workers. The FO civil service trade union federation was planning to mobilise its members and take strike action in early July in protest at the proposals. [Read more at > CGT (FR)->http://www

There are a number of key issues that are the focus of collective bargaining in both provincial and municipal government – purchasing power, employment, violence at work, career development and employment policies that take account of personal circumstances – such as parental leave, telework etc. Negotiations with provincial employers have made progress on the last two while working groups have been set up in the municipal negotiations to discuss these issues. The issue of pay is likely to be the toughest to negotiate with employers claiming that they have little room to manoeuvre as a result

We try to ensure that epsucob@NEWS keeps readers up-to-date with the latest developments in collective bargaining and social dialogue in the public services across Europe. In the last six months we have covered over 130 news items from more than 25 countries and you can check out the country-by-country index of stories on our website. However, there are still gaps in our coverage and we want to encourage readers to send us their collective bargaining news – details of agreements, developments in negotiations and strikes and reports and surveys that might be of interest to collective bargaining