Austria
Following last year's landmark first collective agreement for doctors in non-profit, religious hospitals in Vienna, services union vida has negotiated a new agreement that begins to close the gap with doctors in Vienna's public hospitals. Working with the doctors' chamber in Vienna, vida has secured a 1.35% pay increase overall but with additional payments for different categories of doctor.
Read more at > vida (DE)
The Council of Ministers and European Parliament have failed to reach agreement in their conciliation meetings over the Working Time Directive. The Council of Ministers refused to budge over the controversial issue of the opt-out that allows workers to sign away their working time rights. The European Parliament was pushing for eventual abolition of the opt-out as well as an amendment to acknowledge on-call time at work as working time. Read more at > EPSU (EN) And at > ETUC (EN) And at > ETUC (FR)
The UCAPSE trade union has made a significant breakthrough by negotiating the first collective agreement covering 500 employees at Nefromor a subsidiary of the Fresenius Medical Care multinational. UCAPSE managed to organise workers in 2018 and has since been involved in long and complex negotiations to achieve a collective agreement which now covers pay, minimum wages, working time, education funds, pensions and shift allowances. There are backdated pay increases of 3.25% for 2021 and 3% for 2022. The hourly rate for the lowest paid will rise to around €8.40 (legal minimum wage is €7.73). The
Next month in the Lower Saxony region, the ver.di services union and Marburger Bund doctors' union will begin negotiations over a collective agreement with church organisations. This marks a breakthrough after courts cases have established union rights in the face of claims by church bodies that they should be able to maintain their special arrangements of joint committees that determine workers' pay and conditions. The collective agreement will, however, be negotiated with a process of arbitration and both sides have agreed to cooperate in this new approach which might provide a model for
