2020 EPSU Collective Bargaining News February 03

Workers at the Ameos private, for-profit health company in the Saxony-Anhalt region are taking strike action despite the aggressive intimidation of the company's management. The union wants to negotiate a collective agreement which links workers' pay and conditions to the public sector agreement. Not only have management refused to negotiate but they sacked 14 trade union activists before Christmas and are threatening a further 800 job cuts if the union contnues its campaign. EPSU joined with ver.di in launching a labourstart campaign, targeting the company management.

The BSRB public employees' union joined with the BHM graduates' union and the nurses' union to discuss their collective bargaining strategy in a meeting on 31 January that was streamed to other meetings of local unions across the country. The unions say that after 10 months without progress since the last collective agreement formally expired they are losing their patience. Their message to state and local government negotiators was to return immediately to the bargaining table or the unions would look to take industrial action to get things moving.

As the debate continues during the first phase consultation over the European Commission's proposals on fair minimum wages, the ETUC is highlighting the need for a major boost to legal minimum wages across Europe. It argues that in most of the 22 EU member states with a statutory national minimum wage it fails to meet even the minimal at risk-of-poverty wage threshold of 60% of the median wage. In 10 member states, the statutory minimum is 50% or less of the national median wage.

AIOP, one of the private employer organisations in private health care, angered unions by posing a major threat to continuing negotiations in the sector. The three union federations - FP-CGIL, CISL-FP and UIL-FPL - have been involved in intensive bargaining to try to reach the first new agreement in the sector for 13 years. However, they had to call an emergency meeting with regional health authorities and the ministry of health in order to get the negotiations back on track following an attempt by AIOP to insert a clause that would have enabled it to avoid certain aspects of the agreement on

GPA-djp and vida, the two unions that organise workers in private health care, are organising actions around the country in the lead up to the fifth round of negotiations on 10 February. The sector collective agreement covers 125000 workers and the unions want to see a 35-hour week with no compensating reduction in pay. At the fourth round of bargaining the employers refused to discuss the claim and made no offer themselves and so the unions decided to organise actions to show the strength of feeling on the issue.

The collective agreement covering workers providing disability care has new elements to improve work-life balance. There is an annual hours system based on a 36-hour week for a full-time worker. This alllows for flexibility to help address peaks and troughs in the service but on the basis that employers have to abide by clear rules in both the collective agreement and legislation. Workers in the sector can also now look to the collective agreement to assert their right not to be contactable during their time off. The FNV trade union sees this as an essential measure to tackle increasing stress

The ver.di services union has welcomed a major improvement in minimum wages in the care sector agreed by the joint care sector committee that recommends rates for implementation by the labour ministry. With higher increases for Eastern regions, it means that there will be single rates for the whole country by September 2021. The rate for non-qualified workers will rise to EUR 11.35 this year and to EUR 12.55 by 2022. The rate for those with two-years' training will rise to EUR 13.20 and a new rate for those with three years' training will be introduced in 2021 at EUR 15 and rise to EUR 15.40

With a national protest and strike action trade unions demonstrated their anger with the government's offer of what is effectively a 0.3% pay increase for public sector workers this year. Trade unions are calling for a significant increase after years of pay freezes and for a strengthening of collective bargaining.

Trade unions across the country have been mobilising in protest at the government's plans to make radical and negative changes to the labour code. These would include the unilateral termination of employment contracts, an increase in precarious employment, a reduction of overtime pay and at the same time reduction of existing limitations to overtime work. Other changes are in breach of ILO Conventions on freedom of association and collective bargaining. Trade unions across Europe have been responding with messages of support and solidarity.