Uzbekistan, Iceland, Germany

The collective bargaining committee of the ver.di trade union in the TG GWE bargaining group has voted by nearly three to one to back a new 23-month agreement. The negotiations cover gas, water and energy workers who get a 6.5% pay increase this year (from 1 February) and 3.7% next year – from 1 January. Trainees will see their pay levels increase by 3% for each year of training. Meanwhile the union’s members at ONYX Power have made clear their priorities in the upcoming negotiations where ver.di will be demanding a 12-month agreement with a 14% pay increase for all employees, including

The ver.di trade union has reached a collective bargaining agreement with the EKBO evangelical church which employs approximately 8,000 employees. The wage increases that were agreed in regional government earlier this year will be taken over in full by the EKBO collective agreement, albeit with a slight time delay. There will be a tax-free one-off payment of €3000 to mitigate inflation followed by salary increases of €200 in January and a further 5.5% in March 2025 by which time full-time pay will be €340 higher per month. In addition, there are improvements to social and educational services

Members of ver.di at the state-owned DAK health insurance company took strike action on Tuesday 12 March to put pressure on the company in the lead up to the third round of collective bargaining. DAK only marginally improved its offer in the second round of negotiations. Ver.di has called for a 12.5% pay increase with at least €555 more per month – for a term of 12 months. For trainees, there will be €250 more per month. DAK employs around 12,000 people nationwide and the next round of bargaining was due on 15 March.

The ver.di trade union continues to negotiate with employers in the private and non-profit health sector to tackle staff shortages. The latest success comes after 19 days of strike action at the Jewish Hospital in Berlin where staffing levels will be stipulated across most areas of operation and employees will get compensation in the form of additional days off if the hospital fails to abide by the agreement. If workers are in stressful situations because of staff shortages they accumulate points which can mount up to be taken as time off. The agreement will apply from December 2024. Public

Support from her union, the Marburger Bund (MB) representing doctors, helped a union activist win a legal case against her employer, the Helios hospital group. Franziska Schlosser was an anaesthesiologist at the ENDO clinic in Hamburg, part of the Helios Group. She was active on the union’s bargaining committee and had been a strike leader. She was sacked on 8 June last year following accusations of a working time fraud of 28 minutes which she strongly denied and contested. The MB supported her legal challenge and notes that Schlosser stood her ground over several months despite intimidation

EPSU has published the second in a series of articles on working time reduction, focusing this time on Iceland. Ten years ago the country had some of the longest weekly working hours in Europe and then trade unions began to address the issue through a series of pilot projects and negotiations in both municipalities and central administration. Trade unions worked closely with management to ensure services were maintained and the results of the pilot projects showed that working time could be reduced without loss of pay with surveys showing increased well-being among workers. Many local and

The ver.di trade union reports a very positive result for employees of the Alba waste and cleaning company based in Cottbus and Lausitz in Eastern Germany. Workers will see a pay increase of at least €335 a month as of 1 January 2025 but with an initial increase of €205 backdated to 1 January 2024. The union says this corresponds to a 14.47% pay increase overall with employees with more than six years of service in pay group 4 getting €432 more, ending up with a gross salary of €2959.53 – an effective increase of 17.09%. Additional payments for unplanned work and work on Saturdays from noon

The ver.di trade union starts the new year with a demand for better working hours and working conditions, more money and more staff across the public services and is launching a campaign and survey on working hours among public sector employees. In local public transport the union is calling for a reduction in weekly working hours, additional relief days for shift and night work and an increase in holiday entitlement. Ver.di also says that a total of more than 300,000 positions are currently unfilled in federal, state and local governments and with many workers due to retire around 1.4 million

The ver.di trade union has strongly condemned the violence against firefighters, rescue services and police officers on New Year's Eve and calls on employers to do much more to fulfil their duty of care towards employees. Numerous workers were injured after coming under fire from rockets and firecrackers or as a result of other attacks. The events on New Year's Eve have highlighted the kinds of violence to which many public sector workers are exposed on a day-to-day basis. The union wants employers to ensure they document all incidents and that employees report all assaults, write accident

The ver.di trade union has begun to consult members over the deal reached on 9 December with regional government employers after a third round of bargaining. The agreement is comparable to that covering federal and municipal workers and includes a tax-free lump sum of €3,000, which will be paid as a one-off amount of €1,800 in December 2023, followed by monthly payments of €120 between January and October 2024. On 1 November 2024, monthly salaries will be increased by €200 and then increased again by 5.5% on 1 February 2025 (with the guarantee of a minimum increase of €340). Ver.di believes

Public service union ver.di is mobilising to put pressure on the regional government employers in the lead up to the next round of collective bargaining on 7-8 December. Workers at university and psychiatric hospitals, educational and social institutions, universities, road and water management, theatres, courts and other services are involved in one-day warning strikes. The employers have yet to come up with a pay offer in response to the trade union demands for a 10.5% pay increase with minimum of €500. The negotiations cover 1.1 million public employees and ver.di will be pushing for the

Public service union ver.di has welcomed the fact that the federal government has finally confirmed that the April 2023 collective agreement for employees in federal and local government should now be applied retroactively to federal civil servants, judges, soldiers and pension recipients. The union has been frustrated about such a long delay at a time of high costs for food, energy and housing. It wants to ensure that at the end of the current negotiations covering employees in regional government, its provisions are applied immediately to the 1.4 million civil servants and 1 million pension

Public services union ver.di reports that in the second round of negotiations for regional government employees on 3 November the employers failed to submit an offer and flatly rejected all essential union demands. Thousands of members of ver.di and other public sector unions joined warning strikes at the beginning of the second round of negotiations to show the strength of support for the unions’ key demands. Ver.di says that employers are turning a blind eye to massive staff shortages, the stress endured by many workers and inadequate levels of pay, particularly in comparison to federal and

On 24 October, the BSRB public sector federation was one of more than a dozen organisations supporting a day of action calling for urgent action to address gender inequality, the gender pay gap and to tackle gender-based and sexual violence. Actions ranged from strikes and demonstrations to the withdrawal of all forms of labour, paid and unpaid. Since the first women’s day of action in 1975, unions and other organisations in the country have organised major strikes and protests and there has been some reduction in gender inequality. However, there is still a long way to go with the gender pay