Strike, Prisons Services, ECEC

Eight public service trade unions – CFDT, CFE-CGC, CGT, FA, FO, FSU, Solidaires and UNSA – met on 24 January and issued a joint communique condemning the absence of any measures to increase public service pay, particularly in context of sustained inflation. The unions are calling for immediate negotiations to address issues around careers and salaries and have rejected President Emmanual Macron’s talk of better recognizing "merit" as a tactic to avoid the urgent need to improve pay and conditions. The unions have set 19 March as a national day of action, including strikes and other protests

Members of the CCOO trade union in early years education have taken three days of strike action with a fourth planned for 15 November. They also came from all regions of Spain to join a national demonstration in Madrid on 2 November as part of their campaign to secure improvements to pay and secure real progress after over two years of negotiations with private sector employers. The union wants action to address precarious employment conditions and has had to resort to industrial action to put pressure on the employers to negotiate on the issue. The union argues that pay and working conditions

Following successful strike action in private childcare providers last autumn represented by the PBL employers’ organisation, the Fagforbundet trade union is again calling its members out on strike this time in the companies that are part of the NHO employers’ organisation. The aim is to ensure that workers in NHO companies are entitled to pensions on the same basis as municipal workers and those in the PBL agreement. This means a pension guaranteed for life and on a gender-equal basis and with some protection against the fluctuations of the stock market. Strikes began in a first group of

A one-day strike by ver.di members at airports around the country took place on 17 February partly in support of the negotiations in federal and municipal government and partly in support of separate negotiations in ground handling services and aviation security. On 13 February, ver.di members around the country submitted early years education plans to local archives and museums as a gesture to highlight that they are currently impossible to implement. The union estimates that childcare services currently lack of 170,000 trained staff. Ver.di has also negotiated an agreement on staffing at the

The public service unions Fagforbundet and Delta, along with the UF teachers’ union, are stepping up their industrial action to secure better pension rights for workers in private kindergartens. The action began on 17 October when mediation with the PBL employers’ organisation failed. More workers were due to join the action on 27 October which aims to ensure that workers covered by the PBL agreement have the same pension rights as childcare workers in municipalities. The action is getting widespread support, including a delegation from EPSU and its affiliates, and has helped boost union

The three main trade unions - CGSP/ACOD, ACV/CSC and SLFP/VSOA - organised a 48-hour national strike from 6am on 24 September in protest at proposals to relax the rules on prisoner visits. The unions are extremely concerned that the proposed changes come at a time of increasing infection and pose a serious threat to staff and inmates.