Remunicipalisation, Restructuring, Privatisation, Portugal, Belgium

The impact of the pandemic has led to restructuring of some care homes in the Brussels region where employers are arguing that declining occupation rates and costs of anti-COVID measures are making some homes unviable. The Armonea (Colisée) group has announced plans to close one facility (Sebrechts) with the loss of 108 jobs while unions at the Senior Living Group, part of the Korian multinational, are looking at ways to avoid compulsory redundancies with a range of measures. The unions at the Sebrecht care home have issued a strike notice and there is determination to fight what is seen as a

The CNE trade union is organising a series of weekly actions in the health and care sector to raise awareness of the serious problems relating to workloads and poor working conditions in hospitals and other care institutions. The union is coming up with a range of inventive actions on each "white-shirt" Tuesday to highlight the demands of workers to make the sector more attractive. The third Tuesday (18 June) focused on care homes and the poor pay and working conditions of care workers, particularly in home run by multinational companies.

Workers at the Aguas de Portugal (AdP) water company are considering strike action if a number of key demands are not met. Apart from improvements in pay and career development, the workers want to see a progressive reduction in working hours and measures to address the fact that restructuring of the company has lead to many workers being on different rates of pay despite having the same length of service and responsibilities. Unions mobilised on the 27 March to put pressure on management which has so far failed to address these issues.