Romania’s state pension system needs a complete overhaul focused on contributions and private funds to become sustainable, the Finance Minister said. Since 2008, it is mandatory for all working Romanians under 35 to contribute to private pension schemes as well as their state pension, but still this is not enough to fill the coffers.
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[close]The long struggle concerning terms of employment in the City of Turku owned food and janitorial services company Arkea was finally resolved. The company decided to return to their earlier collective agreement after a failed attempt to move 1.000 employees to other agreements with major cuts in salaries and holidays.
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[close]After eight rounds of negotiations there is a new collective agreement at Telekom Austria. The result: 2.2% wage increase with a maximum of €110 for 11,000 employees. The wage increase affects not only the employees, as Telekom Austria offered, but also contract workers and civil servants. Another improvement reached is an increase in apprentices’ compensation.
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[close]The government and unions are to face-off over controversial pension reforms, 14 days into a crippling transport strike that has damaged businesses, frustrated commuters and cast a shadow over holiday plans. After hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets, both sides stood firm prior to a series of meetings. Union leaders have vowed to continue their action into the new year as the government defended its plan to forge the country’s 42 pension schemes into a single, points-based system.
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[close]In total, more than 20,000 people who work in the health service in Northern Ireland were involved in this action. Nine thousand Royal College of Nursing nurses held a 12-hour strike. The problem of pay and funding for nurses and healthcare staff dates back to about 2010.Until January 2017, it was the responsibility of a health minister in the devolved Stormont executive to decide on pay for healthcare staff in Northern Ireland.
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[close]According to Statistics Estonia, 21.7% of the Estonian population (284,000 residents) lived at risk of poverty and 2.4% lived in absolute poverty in 2018. Compared to 2017, the share of people at risk of poverty decreased by 0.2 percentage points and the share of those living in absolute poverty by 0.3 percentage points. In 2018, a person was considered to be at risk of poverty, if his or her equivalised monthly disposable income was less than €569, and in absolute poverty, if it was less than €215.
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[close]Hourly labour costs increase year-on-year in Cyprus (6.1%) in Q3 were nearly three times the eurozone average (2.6%) and double that of the EU28 (3.1%). In the second quarter of 2019, hourly labour costs increased by 2.8% (euro area), 3.2% (EU28) and 6.1% (Cyprus), according to data published by Eurostat. In Cyprus, the costs of hourly wages and salaries rose by 4.0% and the non-wage component rose by 16.7% in Q3 2019. In Q2 2019, annual changes were +4.1% and +17.1%, respectively.
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[close]After two years that saw heavy investments offshore salaries in oil industry rise. For the 225,000 Norwegians who work in oil and gas, this is good news. Wage inflation has pushed the average oil industry salary for academic- and science-based jobs to NOK 1 million a year (€100,000), the engineer-heavy union, Tekna, says in a statement.
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[close]Due to the disproportionately low allowances, six surgeons out of the total of seven submitted their resignation in a South-Pest hospital. According to the Director General, the situation does not affect the institution’s high level of health care services. He revealed that negotiations are still going on – the doctors have not yet accepted the increased allowances and the improvement of working conditions.
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[close]The Schweizerischer Gewerkschaftsbund (SGB, Swiss Trade Union Confederation) examined the average pensions in sectors with a high proportion of women and part-time employees. In many of these sectors, second pillar pensions are extremely low. There is an urgent need for improvement in the pension situation for women in part-time jobs.
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