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Europe’s Industrial Strategy and Eco-Systems lack workers’ perspective
The European Commission has published its Industrial Sector and an overview of so-called eco-systems recently. The European Trade Union Federations and the ETUC are critical about the lack of engagement with the social partners at national and European level.
European and national sectoral social partners calling for the need to strengthen involvement of social partners to boost the recovery of the pandemic
The involvement of sectoral social partners in European Semester is crucial to bridge the currently existing democratic and social gap.
European strategy meeting on public services and human rights
The pandemic only proves the urgency of this moment to build public services as part of a just and equitable recovery and a transition to a more sustainable and resilient economy and society. Privatised and underfunded public health and social services struggled to save lives and to protect their workers.
Norwegian and Polish shop stewards: common experience of taking services back into public hands
Poor treatment of employees, outdated equipment and low quality of services – outsourcing and privatisation of municipal services has similar negative effects whether it takes place in Poland or Norway.
Union urges support for 4-day week campaign
The Fórsa public service union is urging its members to back the four-day week campaign by signing up to a global petition to encourage employers to pilot a four-day working week. The initiative seeks to identify and recruit employers to trial a shorter working week without loss of pay or productivity. The aim will be to reach out to employers identified with significant employee support and encourage them to join the global pilot in 2022. Participating employers will receive the support of experts from the four-day week organisation and university researchers from Harvard, Oxford and Boston
Key step towards separate agreement for health and social care staff
As agreed during the last bargaining round in municipal services, a new collective agreement will apply from 1 September that will cover around 180000 health and social care staff employed by municipalities and joint municipal authorities. The Super and TEHY trade unions believe that in future the separate negotiations will enable them to address more effectively the needs of their members. The agreement – SOTE – takes over the provisions of the current KVTES municipal collective agreement and will run until February 2022. The change will also mean that staff in early years education will
Health unions continue to push for extension of Corona-Bonus
Unions representing workers in health and social care are continuing to campaign to ensure that all employees get the EUR 500 corona-bonus that the government promised last month. Initially restricted to doctors and nurses, unions were successful in getting the payment extended to more occupations in health and social care but they still feel that this is unfair. They point out, for example, that those working for the disabled as well as cleaning and security staff are excluded despite facing similar risks and being integral to the team work necessary to tackle the pandemic.
Nurses continue strike action
Following the rejection of the mediation proposal last month, nurses have continued their strike action for higher pay. The DSR nursing union membership voted to reject the public sector deal negotiated earlier this year because it failed to address low pay in the sector. The union has been highlighting recent data to support their case including a fall in applications for nursing education to the lowest level since 2013. The union also found that 5% of nurses had left the profession last month because of low pay and overwork and that pay for overtime had cost employers over DKK 500 million in