All articles

Great Britain: unions diversify strike tactics
In mid-October, Unison members at Barnet council in London held a second one-day strike against the proposed contracting out of services and job cuts. In order to get their message across to the...
Germany: Act on reducing working time to care for a dependent person to come into force on January 1, 2012
Reconcile work and caring for a dependent person.  Kristina Schröder (CDU) thinks that the new law is an “innovative system” meeting real needs.  Thus, the Minister claims that, out of the 2.4...
Greece: the law giving preference to company-level wage negotiations passed
Article 37 of the law introducing new austerity measures, which notably affects the signing of company agreements and their relation to sectoral collective agreements, is the one that made the...
24 October 2011
Belgium: new measures to combat social fraud in construction
Joint liability.  From now on, the contractor and subcontractor will be jointly responsible for paying minimum wage to the latter’s employees.  The contractor may ask for copies of the payroll...
Italy: Lombardy strikes deal with major universities to promote high training apprenticeship
Roberto Formigoni, President of Lombardy, signed, on October 18th, with the headmasters of the ten biggest universities in the region (Università degli Studi di Milano, Milano Bicocca, Università...
21 October 2011
Germany: anticipating coming difficulties, the social partners and the Democratic Party are asking for the extension of short-time working measures
Quick appeal to short-time working.  In two different declarations, the heads of German employers and trade unions asked that the Merkel administration extended the period during which businesses...
21 October 2011
Spain: union and employers’ organizations strike deal to unfreeze sectoral collective bargaining
tive agreements have been frozen for several years. Therefore, the UGT and Workers’ Commissions (CCOO) unions and the CEOE and Ceypme employers’ organizations signed an agreement to...
Germany: Airbus signs “Agreement for the Future” with job security until 2020
the Airbus social partners in Germany announced that they finally stroke a “complementary” collective agreement on working conditions and the organization of labor. After months of...
Germany: the crisis of bonuses Opel gave its works council revives the debate on the remuneration of employee representatives
Infringement to the WC Act.  It all started with an article published on October 15th in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung daily (FAZ) headlined: “Opel bribes employee representatives.”  The...
20 October 2011
Portugal: unions call for a general strike on November 24th against 2012 austerity measures
d to join forces against austerity and are calling for a general strike on November 24th. This date overlaps with the last reading of the tentative 2012 budget before the final vote on November...
GDF Suez: EWC renders negative opinion on the partnership with the CIC Chinese Sovereign wealth fund because of doubts on the CSR compatibility of the fund’s investments
stments a subject for EWCs? In any case, the EWC of GDF Suez rendered, on October 13th, a negative opinion on the plan to open the capital of its Gas exploration business (“Exploration et...
Austria: launch of collective negotiations for 520,000 trade employees
d in the Austrian trade on Wednesday, October 19th for 520,000 employees (280,000 for retail trade alone). The renegotiation of the biggest collective agreement in the country is arriving the day...
Spain: businesses say 2010 labor market reform is ineffective
85% of the people surveyed believe that the measures of the labor market reform, adopted in 2010 (see our dispatch No.  100669), brought about no significant changes to working conditions, and 60%...
France: the ordinance transposing the EWC (recast) Directive was published
Takeover bids.  As a general rule, the ordinance is quite close to the wording of the Directive, except that it introduces a provision, as it happens based on an existing rule for French works...
Denmark: social partners and institutions multiply initiatives for the occupational safety of young people
The goal of this initiative?  Focusing on the high accident rate among young people.  “We can see that young people and new employees have a higher accident rate than other groups of workers.  It...
Deutsche Bahn: German railway launches program at group level to increase the proportion of female employees
eutsche Bahn (DB) has set out clear objectives to increase the number of women in management over the next few years. And the railway company also concretely explained how it was going to do it...
19 October 2011
Most viewed articles of the month on mind HR
What readers clicked on the most last month.
What readers clicked on the most last month.
1
United Kingdom: government launches consultation on AI and data protection rules
L’info. Le gouvernement britannique a lancé, du 15 juillet au 9 septembre 2026, une consultation afin d’identifier les dispositifs juridiques, techniques et de gouvernance...
28 August 2026
2
EU: social partners set out position on guidelines for the sustainability due diligence directive
The news. Following the final adoption of the omnibus directive in February, the European Commission launched a consultation in June aimed at guiding it in drafting guidelines on the application...
28 August 2026
3
Import bans on forced labor products are multiplying
Under pressure from new US tariffs, many countries have presented texts in recent weeks to ban the import of products made with forced labor. A real breakthrough for workers' rights or a mere...
9 September 2026
4
Germany: a “simplification” proposal for the Corporate Governance Code
In early August, the Government Commission presented proposals to reform the Deutscher Corporate Governance Kodex (DCGK), Germany’s Corporate Governance Code. The proposals are primarily aimed at...
31 August 2026
5
France: EDF served formal notice for failure to comply with its sustainability due diligence obligations
The news. On 23 September, Greenpeace France announced that it had served EDF with a formal notice for failure to comply with its sustainability due diligence obligations due to the risks of harm...
24 September 2026
6
Slovakia: a bill to “clarify” personal data protection measures
The news. The Slovak government approved a bill on personal data protection on August 26, 2026. This text aims to clarify existing regulations regarding employees’ rights and...
7 September 2026