7 April 2021
‘Telework is here to stay and unions need to learn how to organise workers online and address their concerns.’ With this in mind, IndustriAll Europe, the European...
25 March 2021
Based on the observation that the pandemic ‘removes all our certainties’ and necessarily leads us to reflect upon the world of tomorrow, the ETUC’s Rethinking project...
22 March 2021
Sodexo, the French food services and facilities management company, and the IUF (International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers’ Associations), signed a joint...
17 March 2021
On 16 March, UNI Europa Finance together with the European insurance sector employers – Insurance Europe, BIPAR and AMICE – signed a Joint Declaration on Artificial Intelligence ‘to encourage social partners at all levels in the insurance sector to deal with artificial intelligence (AI) in a reasonable way that provides opportunities for the sector and its employees.’ The signatories, who are affected by AI use, maintain that AI technology per se is neither good nor bad and that its use must be shaped...
11 March 2021
On 05 March the Central Arbitration Committee (CAC) * issued a decision that included conclusions pertaining to European Works Councils (EWCs) and information and consultation requirements. In its decision the CAC affirmed that as soon as collective redundancies are planned in at least two countries, an extraordinary meeting of the EWC must be organized, even if the redundancy plans do...
1 March 2021
The garment industry has been hit by an unprecedented crisis, resulting most notably from the cancellation of orders by major brands and retailers. Many workers in supply chains have lost work as a consequence, which is a particularly major blow for those in countries where social protection systems are either poorly developed or non-existent. The issues endured by this sector, which is highly globalised and on which millions of jobs and sometimes national economies depend, have very quickly drawn attention to the...
26 February 2021
International trade unions are addressing the issue of remote work. On Wednesday 23 February, UNI Global Union, the international services sector trade union federation, published a set of guidelines aimed at local trade unions, to give them the tools for negotiating agreements on remote work that take into account issues that have been identified, such as trade union rights, collective labour rights, surveillance tools, whether arrangements are voluntary and reversible, workload and the right to disconnect....
23 February 2021
23 February is the launch date for IndustriAll Europe’s ‘Telework: my right, my decision’ campaign, which is highlighting the need for telework to be regulated. The European Industry Union Federation believes collective bargaining is best placed to guarantee teleworking conditions, which are also beneficial for workers. Unregulated telework would, on the other hand, lead to infringements of employees’ rights with the potential for overwork, remote monitoring of digital tools, and even additional...
17 February 2021
On 16 February, the CAC* (Central Arbitration Committee, is the first instance that deals with disputes over collective rights) handed down a new decision (here) on a case concerning a company (non-European) that transferred its corporate management’s representative agent to Ireland as a result of Brexit (for more on an earlier CAC EWC-related decision on 18 January 2021, c.f. article...
9 February 2021
We are relaying the ETUI’s call to European WC members and coordinators to complete a survey that seeks to find out how EWCs have been involved in managing the impact of the Covid pandemic. The survey has been designed to only take 15 minutes to complete. Although the survey is written in English, the presentation page guides respondents on how to automatically translate the questionnaire online. You can access the questionnaire here: https://bit.ly/36mddfv
26 January 2021
Less than 3 weeks after the announcement of the launch of a Google labour union (the Alphabet Workers Union) in the United States an international coalition of 13 Google unions (Verdi, Unionen, etc.) from 10 countries was formed on 25 January called Alpha Global (named after Google’s parent company Alphabet, c.f. article No.12288), and is headed by UNI Global Union, the global union services federation. The coalition has four main objectives: to set up a global strategy and cooperation between the unions...
22 January 2021
The trade union federations IndustriAll Europe, Uni Europa, EFFAT, EPSU, ETF and EFBWW have issued “joint […] recommendations to EWC/SE coordinators and worker representatives in SNBs, EWCs and SEs” to manage the impact of the UK’s departure from the European Union. The federations invite representatives to make Brexit a recurring theme and a subject of information and consultation and urge them to fight to make sure UK representatives keep their seats on their respective bodies. Furthermore, the...
21 January 2021
On 25 November 2020 the TK Elevator group (TKE group) together with IndustriALL Global union, the German works council, the European Works Council and the German trade union federation IG Metall signed a global framework agreement. TKE group (50,000+ employees worldwide) is the result of a spin-off by the German multi-industrial group Thyssenkrupp in early 2020. In 2015, former owner Thyssenkrupp signed a GFA on labor standards (c.f. article No. 8969) with IG Metall, and this TKE agreement has taken that up and...