On 25 October, Austria’s Federal Council, the Bundesrat, confirmed changes made, during the final Council of Ministers session on 12 October by the then outgoing government prior to the elections, in order to align important aspects of blue and white collar worker employment status conditions. The measures taken concern social protection and employment termination conditions. Only the Greens, Socialists, and Extreme-Right backed the reform that unions see as a landmark change affecting some 3.4 million people.
Longstanding tradition. Until now and since the end of the 19th century, Austria has maintained a separate status for ‘employees and ‘workers’. Not unlike the Anglo-Saxon blue-white collar divide there is a precise white-collar status for those carrying out administrative tasks and low level sales activities and then there is an less precise ‘blue’ status for those carrying out manual and production tasks. More concretely there are some jobs that traditionally cannot be carried out by workers w
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