Local government

The collective agreement covering the municipal sector has now been finalised and runs from 1 May 2022 to 30 April 2025. EPSU affiliates JHL and Jyty report that salaries will increase this month by €46 per month for those on less than €2300 a month and by 2% for salaries above this amount. Allowances will also increase by 2%. A pot of 0.5% will be distributed in October depending on negotiations in September. If the negotiations don’t produce a result the 0.5% will be a general increase for all. Next year and in 2024 wages will increase by at least 1.5% in June with a further 0.4%, allocated

The HK Kommunal local government union reports that negotiations are underway to make the four-day week permanent at the Odsherred municipality, north west of Copenhagen. An experimental scheme began in 2019 with the standard 37 hours worked on Monday to Thursday, leaving Fridays off. The view of staff is generally positive and the negotiations may involve the option for greater flexibility in terms of the weekly day off. Meanwhile, there are new developments in the global 4-day week campaign with the launch of pilot projects involving over 3300 workers in 70 companies in the UK. In contrast

Five of the six trade unions in the LO Kommune bargaining group agreed to back the mediation proposal for municipal workers that was finally delivered on 24 May, averting strikes across the sector. The largest union in the sector, Fagforbundet, reported that the agreement would deliver increases on annual salaries of between NOK 12000 (€1165) and NOK 16800 (€1635). The settlement was ahead of that achieved in manufacturing this year, as the unions had pushed for a better deal to allow catching up on the lower settlement in 2021. The agreement also provides for increased night and weekend

The Super and Tehy health unions are maintaining their ban on overtime and shift changes following their rejection of the proposed deal for health and local government. They continue to press for higher pay increases as essential to help tackle the urgent staff shortages in health and social care. Meanwhile, municipal unions JHL and Jyty are also keeping up their industrial action despite their provisional approval of the agreement. They are pushing for the agreement to be finalised and for the expected payments to be made by the summer, arguing that workers could lose out by over €300 if pay

The STAL municipal workers’ union joined others in the Common Front group of public service unions in a national demonstration on 20 May in Lisbon. The main call was for government action to protect the purchasing power of workers in public administration. The unions argue that 12 years of wage stagnation has seen purchasing power fall by 15.4% and that the proposed pay increase of 0.9% for this year will again mean a significant cut in real pay as prices of food, energy and fuel surge. The unions also want to see a €90 a month rise for all workers, a minimum monthly wage of €850 along with

The Super and Tehy health unions have firmly rejected the settlement proposed by the conciliation committee in the current dispute in local government and health. Meanwhile, the JHL and Jyty municipal services union have endorsed the proposal. The health unions argue that the pay increases on offer are inadequate and simply don’t address the urgent staffing problems in health and social care. The unions are now considering a mass resignation to put pressure on health employers to negotiate a better deal. For local government workers, the three-year pay deal should deliver pay increases of 1.9%

Mediation continues to try to resolve the dispute in the municipal sector where unions JHL and Jyty have planned for more strike action from 3 May if mediation fails to deliver a positive result. As of 28 April, the chair of the conciliation committee said that the two side were still far apart on pay and pay development. Meanwhile the SuPer and Tehy health unions cancelled planned strike action that was due to take place from 20 April, although they are continuing their work-to-rule. The two unions say that they were left with no alternative when the government threatened to introduce

The STAL local government union is planning a series of actions and events from 25 April to 1 May to highlight its key demands on improvements to pay and conditions. The unions says that local and regional government workers have seen their wages frozen and their careers undermined over the past 13 years and now they see their purchasing power radically reduced in recent months. Inflation in March hit 5.3%, contrasting with the 0.9% wage increase proposed by the government for this year. STAL is calling for a €90 increase for all workers and increase in the national minimum wage to €850. It

Around 25,000 members of the TEHY and SuPer nurses’ unions were due to start strike action on 1 April following rejection of a pay offer delivered by mediation. The action is initially targeted at six hospital districts and workers not on strike will join a ban on overtime and shift changes. Further strike action may follow later in April if a better offer is not on the table. The two unions join local government unions, JHL and Jyty, which have already taken two-day strike action in two different municipalities with further action planned in another six – two from 6 April and four from 19

The Fp-Cgil, Cisl-Fp and Uil-Fpl public service federations report a successful mobilisation of members across public health and local services as they put pressure on the employers and government to deliver a good collective agreement and address some long-standing issues in the sectors. Delegations met with the finance and economics minister Alessandra Sartore to put the unions’ case. Along with pay rises for all workers they are looking for reforms to the pay system, funds for local bargaining and above all implementation of an emergency recruitment plan to deal with understaffing across

With inflation hitting a 21-year high of 5.6%, Kevin Callinan, head of the Fórsa public service union, has called for the current “Building momentum” public sector agreement to be reviewed. Under the agreement public service pay will increase by just 1.2% this year. The agreement has an opening clause and Callinan argues that both the high level of inflation and more positive situation for the public finances justify the review. Meanwhile, members of the Medical Laboratory Scientists’ Association (part of the SIPTU trade union) will take strike action on 30 March unless the Department of

The three public service federations – Fp-Cgil, Cisl-FP and Uil-Fpl – have organised a day of action across the country on 25 March in public health and local services to put pressure on the government to improve pay and implement an urgent recruitment plan to tackle understaffing across the sectors. The unions say that they presented a list of key bargaining demands two years ago but the government has failed to properly respond or commit the resources needed to fund the demands. Meanwhile the same federations are mobilising their members in social care to put pressure on the AIOP and ARIS

With municipal employers failing to come up with a decent pay offer, local government unions have planned a series of targeted actions in addition to the ban on overtime and shift changes that ran from 7 to 13 March and will be repeated from 21 to 27 March. Six municipalities have been designated for the two-day stoppages beginning with Jyväskylä and Rovaniemi from 23 to 24 March, then Tampere and Kuopio from 29 to 30 March, followed by Oulu and Turku on 6-7 April. In total the actions cover around 50,000 workers and the unions want to underline the importance of protecting workers’ purchasing

Thousands of council workers in Glasgow in Scotland could be taking strike action on 29 and 30 March unless the local authority responds to demands settle a dispute over equal pay. In 2019, following a union campaign involving strike action, Glasgow council agreed a £500m settlement of equal pay claims up until March 2018 and included a new pay and grading system to rectify issues of unequal pay, primarily of women. Since then, around 5,500 new claims have been lodged for the period prior to March 2018, with nearly 20,000 claimants waiting on settlements for the period after that. The unions