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Luxembourg: interprofessional agreement on harassment and violence at work
Definition. The agreement says that “moral harassment happens when a person from the company repeatedly and/or deliberately makes faulty activities towards an employee or a manager, leading to the...
Netherlands: intense negotiations before a bill on retirement at 67
Raising retirement age from 65 to 67 should help the State save €4 billions each year, in a country where the population is ageing and where the birthrate is at half-mast. The Social and Economic...
Brazil: subcontracting employees in Sao Paulo get a 6.53% wage increase
On Monday, September 28, most of the 60,000 metalworkers in Sao Paulo, on strike for ten days, obtained a 6.53% wage increase, i.e. a real 2% increase after removing inflation, and a bonus...
EU: NGOs and unions join forces to introduce environmental and social issues into the European strategy
Common purpose. The schedules of the ETUC and environmental NGOs will be tightly linked for the next few months. The international conference on climate change in December in Copenhagen, puts...
Sweden: employers and union confederations reveal their goals before the renewal of many collective agreements in 2010
Unions don’t want employees to “pay” anymore. The current context isn’t very prone to unions. Since the economic crisis began, they already had to make numerous sacrifices, like Scania’s employees...
Netherlands: fewer layoffs settled at court
From 75,000 in 2003, the number of layoffs challenged in court went down to less than 21,000 in 2008, in spite of the crisis. Indeed, according to the study commissioned by the Ministry of...
Denmark: historical ruling on equal pay
“Historical victory for equal pay.” This is how Gita Gruning, leader of the Teknisk Landsforbund union (technicians and designers), qualified the decree rendered on September 24 by the Danish...
EU: MEPs remove their proposition to include self-employed drivers into the scope of the working time directive for truck drivers
The wind has turned within the European Parliament’s Committee on Employment and Social Affairs. MEPs finally rejected the report recommending the extension of the 2002 directive on adjusting...
Germany: IG-Metall says the crisis and environmental turn compel to rethink metalworkers’ working time
Massive and durable decline in employment load. “We have to find new working time schemes allowing a) to answer individual flexibility needs and b) to take account of workers’ wage situation” the...
Daimler: official launching of Gl@d, the network of gay employees of the German carmaker
40 employees create GL@D against discrimination. Johanna Kosler and Jorg Sikorski, employees at Daimler, initiated the Gl@d network with the support of the Diversity Management department. In a...
29 September 2009
Spain: agreement at Renault to maintain Spanish sites
Wage freeze and mobility in exchange for new models. The draft agreement of the “Pact for Employment and Competitiveness at Renault Spain” was signed by the management and the UGT, CCOO and CCP...
Unicredit: global union alliance within the group
Improved cooperation. Last week, 13 national unions and the members of Unicredit’s EWC launched a global union alliance. In a communiqué, UNI Finance said that the rapid integration of European...
Italy: the pilot project to support temps affected by the crisis was successful
Promising results. On September 24 Labor Undersecretary Pasquale Viespoli presented the first results of the pilot project to support temps who aren’t entitled to social dampers. In Italy, the...
EU: European trade unions in favor of a revision of the law on the protection of workers from electromagnetic fields
Take account of scientific progress. European staff representatives answered yes to the consultation launched by the European Commission shortly before the summer (see our dispatch No. 090796) on...
Germany: for the first time, Volkswagen’s collective agreement includes a variable wage component based on performance
Towards more flexible wages. Disappointed that the group’s management refused claims accepted by Audi and Porsche, the IG-Metall threatened, last week, with launching warning strikes (see our...
Sweden: end of State pharmaceutical monopoly and first controversial collective agreement
Two agreements to regulate this “new” sector. The entire drugstore network, which used to be controlled by Apoteket AB (State owned), was dismantled on July 1, 2009. The State sold 150 pharmacies...
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1
Netherlands: new government seeks to “control” social costs
In his government policy statement to Parliament on 25 February, Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten announced several measures designed to "control" social costs. Notably, he proposed raising the...
2
Germany: launch of the “WE-Fair” alliance for binational training of skilled foreign workers
Germany continues to expand and diversify its initiatives to attract skilled foreign labour from outside the EU. In mid-March 2026, the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development...
3
Spain: a bill to regulate internships
On 3 March, the Council of Ministers approved the bill on the “Status for persons undergoing non-professional practical training in companies”. The text limits the number of interns a company can...
4
EU: co-legislators aim to pivot European Globalisation Adjustment Fund towards restructuring anticipation
On 25 February, the Council of the EU and the Parliament reached an agreement on the Commission’s proposed regulation to expand the European Globalisation Adjustment Fund (EGF). Under the...
5
Block to slash workforce by nearly half
The news. In his latest shareholder letter, Jack Dorsey, CEO of payment service provider Block (formerly Square), announced plans to slash the company’s workforce “by nearly half, from...