30 March 2021
Following the close on 29 March of a more than month-long unionization poll of Amazon warehouse workers in Bessemer, Alabama, the vote counting process has commenced and the results are expected in the next few days. The event marks a major advance for the American labour movement with the Tech industry representing a significant testing ground for the trade union organizations. The Tech industry employs a great number of workers and their membership could help reinvigorate struggling trade union organizations....
29 March 2021
On Saturday 27 March, social partners in the steel industry of norther Germany struck a new collective agreement for the 70,000 employees in the sector, in the Länder of North Rhine-Westphalia, Lower Saxony and Bremen. Those employees covered by the deal will be eligible for a so-called ‘Covid bonus’, an exceptional payment of €500, which will be paid on 30 June 2021. They will then receive an additional payment each year, amounting to €600 from 2023. Depending on the economic situation of the...
29 March 2021
Could Twitter become a new terrain for industrial relations? That idea is perhaps not so appealing to the US National Labor Relations Board, which has ordered electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla to ask its chief executive Elon Musk to delete a tweet from 2018, in which he said: “Nothing stopping Tesla team at our car plant [in Fremont, California, ed] from voting union. Could do so tmrw if they wanted. But why pay union dues & give up stock options for nothing? Our safety record is 2X better than when plant...
26 March 2021
On 24 March, the trade unions CCOO, Fagsa, Fetico and UGT penned an agreement with Anged, the association of large retailers in Spain, which partially renews the sector’s collective agreement. Presented by negotiators as a ‘transitional agreement’, the deal succeeds the 2017-2020 collective agreement (see article n°10180) and seeks to guide the evolution of a sector undergoing a fundamental shift. The agreement will last for two years (2021-2022) and concerns the El Corte Inglés department stores, as well...
18 March 2021
Following the recent industrial sector agreement (c.f. article No.12411), Italy’s banking sector is also making itself available for an employee vaccination program. The agreement dated 17 March (here) between the employers’ organization ABI (Associazione Bancaria Italiana) and the trade unions Fabi, First-Cisl, Fisac-Cgil, Uilca and Unisin will allow banking sector workers to be vaccinated directly at their place of work, when the vaccines become available. The social partners “undertake to quickly...
16 March 2021
On 08 March the TIM telecommunications group together with the SLC-Cgil, Fistel-Cisl, Uilcom and UGL Telecomunicazioni unions signed an agreement providing for 1,300 voluntary early retirements by 30 November 2021, which will apply to workers becoming eligible for pension rights prior to the end of 2026. Similar agreements have already facilitated the departure of a total of around 4,500 people over the last two years. The agreement notes that TIM is operating amid ‘strong competitive pressure and profound...
15 March 2021
On Thursday 11 March, the trade union Verdi and insurance group Talanx presented a collective agreement to set up a company pension model based on social partnership. Three years after a law bolstering company pensions came into force, this agreement is the first of its kind to implement the provisions of the text. These allow for a model for financing company pensions that offers no guarantee of return and is based in part on riskier and more profitable financial instruments.
15 March 2021
From 1 April until the end of the year, staff at Bayer’s Milan headquarters will experience a “new way of working”, of which the key feature will be the possibility of alternating between working in the office and working remotely. The agreement penned on 19 February by the pharmaceutical group and the Filctem-Cgil, Femca-Csil and Uiltec trade unions – dubbed the “”WOW!” agreement – targets an objectives-based working model after the Covid-19 pandemic and a company-staff relationship based...
12 March 2021
On 10 March Italy’s Lombardy region together with the regional branch of the Confindustria employers’ organization and the national association of occupational physicians presented a protocol agreement (here) that provides for employees to be vaccinated at their workplace. This protocol, which has provoked trade union protest, not least since they were not consulted, can only come into force when it is approved by the national health emergency head, and clearly only when the vaccines themselves become...
10 March 2021
On 04 February 2021, US food giant PepsiCo’s German subsidiary, PepsiCo Deutschland, announced it had signed a teleworking ‘Mobile Working Policy’ agreement with its Works Council. The agreement allows every teleworking eligible employee to freely choose his/her workplace (in Germany) and to adjust working hours as he/she sees fit. Furthermore, these employees are entitled to work from home at least three days per week. Interviewed by Planet Labor, Adriana Cerami, PepsiCo Deutschland Communications Lead,...
