Earlier this year the International Labour Organisation published report by a group of independent experts which is highly critical of the impact of industrial relations reforms in Romania.
The reforms, mainly implemented in the Social Dialogue Law of 2011, were introduced by the then government as it claimed they were necessary to help meet budget deficit reduction targets and restore macroeconomic stability and employment growth.
The report, The Impact of Legislative Reforms on (...)
EPSU’s collective bargaining network
The introduction to the discussion focussed on the development of the network following the initiatives around the coordination of collective bargaining by the ETUC and the European Metalworkers Federation (now industrAll). Participants talked about the role and membership of the network. It should continue as primarily an email contact list with the focus on information exchange but could be used more regularly to consult on things like the organisation (...)
EPSU affiliate OAO (the Central Federation of State Employees Organisations) reports on the negotiations and conflict in the Danish state sector.
This collective bargaining round has been most unusual with employers resorting to industrial action and Government interference in collective bargaining.
The social partners were not able to reach an agreement for the whole of the state sector, as the Ministry of Finance and relevant unions did not come to terms on a working time agreement for (...)
The attacks on collective bargaining across Europe are the result of policies being advocated not just by European Institutions - the European Commission and the European Central Bank - but also by the third partner of the so-called troika - the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The IMF promotes what it sees as the positive effects on economic growth of its preferred menu of labour market reforms - decentralised collective bargaining and lower coverage, weaker trade unions and flexible (...)
(26 April 2013) Earlier this month the European Commission published its biennial Industrial Relations in Europe report. This includes three major chapters that examine trends in the public services and providing further evidence of the erosion of social dialogue and attacks on workers’ pay and conditions.
Endorsing austerity Although produced by DG Employment and Social Affairs the report’s perspective doesn’t appear to deviate from the narrow focus on austerity promoted by the Commission (...)
This was a five-country research project coordinated by Professors Damian Grimshaw and Jill Rubery at the European Work and Employment Research Centre, University of Manchester. The comparative and country reports are all available here.
The research set out to examine the following issues:
patterns of public sector pay reforms and pay settlements since 2005;
government and social partner strategies towards public sector pay and the extent of changes in processes of social dialogue and (...)
Social dialogue and public services in the aftermath of the economic crisis – strengthening partnership in an age of austerity
This was a six-country research project coordinated by Professor Stephen Bach at King’s College in London. The final conference took place in February 2013 and the comparative and country reports are all available here.
The central questions that the researchers set out to answer were:
What have been the main drivers and measures of austerity adopted in each (...)
Speaking at a conference on wages in Brussels on 1 February, EPSU deputy general secretary, Jan Willem-Goudriaan, criticised national governments and the European institutions for their attacks on collective bargaining and pay and conditions in the public sector.
Responding directly to comments from the European Central Bank (ECB), he also made clear that EPSU was opposed to the policy of imposing wage moderation on the public sector in order to influence pay developments in the private (...)
Contribution of European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU), by Jan Willem Goudriaan; Wage and Employment session
As the main federation representing public service workers in Europe, EPSU fully supports the ETUC position of the collective bargaining guideline aiming for pay increases that compensate for inflation and provide workers with a fair share of national average productivity growth. And that pay bargaining is a national issue for the national social partners. The social (...)
On 8 January, DG Employment published Employment and Social Developments in Europe 2012. Chapter 5 of the report is "Wage developments in the European Union during a severe economic downturn" and provides a broad range of data that will be up for discussion at the tripartite meeting on wage trends on 1 February 2013.
The report examines changes in wages, productivity and labour costs during a pre-crisis period (2001-2007) and for the years 2008-2011 that cover the crisis period for most EU (...)
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