Collective Bargaining

After an earlier strike in February 2018, Air France unions voted in favour of further strikes. The first one took place on Friday 23 March, leading to a cancellation of a quarter of the scheduled flights. The second strike action is planned on Friday March 30th, the eve of the Easter weekend. Unions demand a 6% pay rise but management so far offered only 1%. Unions state that while the company is making profits, salaries (including those of pilots) have not been increased since 2012.

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Remuneration research and recent increases of executive pay have led to public anger. Trade union FNV and several political parties expressed outrage and raised questions as a massive pay rise for the CEO at INGB Bank was announced. The current good governance code requires companies to explain their internal pay ratios. The idea is to have the supervisory board weigh both management compensation, but also consider the effect of top salaries on the rest of the company when setting out pay scales. This should result in a moderating effect on pay for top executives. However, so far, the gap is only widening, with among 21 listed companies the average pay disparity of high earners 83 times the pay level of average workers. Top earner was the CEO of Unilever receiving 292 time higher than the average of the workforce.

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An ongoing labour dispute could mean the country will be effectively paralysed from 1 April 2018 when public service workers go on strike or are locked out, if no agreement has been reached by that time. The unions, representing 180,000 state employees and around 500,000 people employed by the municipalities, are demanding an 8.2% pay rise over three years but have been offered only 6.7%. The government can choose to stop the conflict by law with a lock-out and unions therefore expect a quick government intervention.

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Trade union Ver.di called for targeted strikes in the beginning of March after a second round of negotiations on wage rises failed to produce an offer from the management of Deutsche Telekom. In a third round of talks that took place on the 22 and 23 March, management offered a 2% pay raise for salaried staff on July 1 with a further pay increase of 1.7 % on March 1, 2019. The trade union is seeking a 5.5% pay rise over 12 months and has rejected the offer. Unions will continue to put pressure on Deutsche Telekom and warned for further strikes in advance of the next round of collective bargaining negotiations in April.

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In a report, based on wage data of 40,000 employers, it is said that the pay differentials between the best and the poorest paid workers have increased with 5% in the last 6 years. Whilst low-paid workers were confronted with a standstill, the highest earners succeeded in substantial wage increases. Fulltime workers, belonging to the category of the 10% best paid, earned on average a monthly gross wage of 5,030 euro, an increase with 430 euro. The 10% category lowest paid received only 80 euro extra over that period, bringing the monthly gross wage at 1,790 euro. The difference widened in 2016 with 3%.

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The annual ETUI report ‘Benchmarking Europe 2018’ examines ‘real wages’, i.e. the value when cost of living is taken into account. It shows that workers in nine EU countries – Italy, UK, Spain, Belgium, Greece, Portugal, Finland, Croatia and Cyprus – are earning less in 2017 than they did in 2010. Working people in six of those countries – Italy, UK, Spain, Belgium, Greece and Finland – also earned less in 2017 than they did in 2016. Salaries have tumbled by as much as 20% between 2010 and 2017. Greek workers suffered the biggest loss of real wages with minus 19%.

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According to a WorkForce Europe 2018 survey on over 10,000 workers on the continent including 1,300 employees in Italy, 40% of Italian workers say that they are so stressed by their job and that they would like a new one. This is the highest in Europe. Moreover, 16% of the workers believe that their company does not care about their psychological and physical wellbeing at all.

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After a petition for ‘a dignified’ salary that was signed by nearly 100,000 people and the threat of an all-out cleaners strike at the Mail’s offices in Kensington the cleaners demands have been met: as of 1st April 2018, they will all receive the London Living Wage of 10.20 pound per hour. Before the cleaners were paid the current UK minimum wage of 7.50 pound per hour. In real terms the cleaners have secured a 25% wage increase equating to nearly 500 pounds extra per month per worker, or around 6,000 pounds extra per year.

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Initial talks between employers and the two large trade union federations LO and YS that were meant to resolve the dispute over pension reforms and prevent widespread strikes have failed. The major point of conflict that risks impacting output in western Europe’s biggest crude producer are the terms for early retirement at the age of 62. A state-appointed mediator has been called in to resolve the issue before 7 April, the day after which most workers are allowed to go on strike. In the planned strike as many as 235,000 private sector workers in a variety of businesses around the country could take part and it would be the first massive strike in 18 years.

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Trade union Vida, the union for on-board personnel, and Lufthansa’s Austrian Airlines started in October 2017 with their bargaining round. The two sides are still miles away from reaching an agreement. The main dispute concerns a pay rise. Austrian Airlines offered an increase in salaries of 2.1% and an additional onetime pay of 1.4%. The works council and the trade union want to raise the wage level to the standard level that is paid in the industry. At Easyjet, for instance, wages are on average 10 to 20% higher both in the cockpit and in the cabin. The ongoing negotiations resulted in a cancellation of multiple flights.

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