Spain: unions and employers prepare the reform of collective bargaining
Prepare the reform. Reforming collective bargaining should help improve relations within businesses, productivity and competitiveness, and encourage employee participation.  Representatives of the...
Great Britain: new Unite leader Len McCluskey wants to launch a campaign in 2011 to save the Welfare State
The day he was officially appointed Unite general secretary (see our dispatch No. 100825), he told the media: ‘[W]orking people are under massive attack now.  This government is expecting them to...
Portugal: unitary general strike of Wednesday November 24th qualified of the “biggest ever”
Numbers.  Unions said about 3 million people adhered to the paralysis of Wednesday, November 24th, out of 5.5 million active people.  With this number, they declared that the strike was a perfect...
Germany: BASF grants job security to 33,000 employees until 2015
Social partnership at the heart of modernization.  After Siemens, which offered its German employees employment guarantee tacitly renewable, now BASF is giving 5 years of job security (January 1...
Romania: slight minimum wage increase
After months bargaining, the Romanian government finally increased minimum wage, from RON 600 to 670 (approximately EUR 143 to 160). This is more than the IMF recommended but less than what...
Italy: unitary agreement for the renewal of the national collective agreement in ceramics
After five months bargaining, ceramics unions, who presented three separate platforms, reached a unitary agreement for the renewal of the sector’s CCN, which expired on June 30th.  Valid from July...
Germany: IG-Metall wants to “strike at” the renewable energy sector
Businesses locked on the issue of collective agreements.  The warning strikes organized these past few days by the 180 employees of Solibro, subsidiary of Q-Cells, one of the world leaders in the...
United States: two-tier wage scales gain traction
Harley Davidson.  Harley Davidson’s management organized the first round of negotiations.  Motorbikes sales, for $35,000 (about €26,000) a piece, slowed down during the recession the market is 40%...
24 November 2010
Italy: Agenquadri general executives’ association renews CGIL affiliation pact
“The union needs project managers and executives, and project managers and executives need the union.”  It is with this slogan that the CGIL and Agenquadri, the general association of project...
Great Britain: Tesco chain stores introduce overtime booking system
With some 340,000 staff in employed in its 2,500 stores, Tesco is the biggest private sector in Britain and has in effect created its own form of an internal labour market. Thus, its frontline...
23 November 2010
Great Britain: Len McCluskey becomes the new general secretary of the biggest union in Britain, Unite
This represents a decisive victory for the left, albeit a divided left, for the total left vote was 153,000 votes (McCluskey plus Hicks) while the combined rightwing and centre-left vote was...
Italy: pharmaceutical-chemistry social partners reach national agreement on CSR guidelines
Federchimica and Farmindustria for employers and Filctem-CGIL, Femca-Cisl and Uilcem-Uil for unions (which signed the CCN in pharmaceutical-chemistry) signed, on November 18th in Milan, within the...
22 November 2010
International: auto unions adopt a resolution on collective bargaining
Soaring precariousness. Delegates from 13 countries met earlier this month to discuss the situation of auto workers.  In a resolution, they point to the worsening working conditions in the sector...
22 November 2010
Germany: renowned economists and research institutes belie the theory of a striking lack of skilled workers
A censored study?  Are German businesses facing a penalizing shortage in skilled workers or not?  Since this summer, businesses, employers’ organizations and some economists (see our dispatch No...
19 November 2010
Netherlands: Dutch people are the European champions for time spent in transportation to go to work
Traffic jams have become a national issue, and an electoral argument for the last general election.  Twice a day (at 8 am and 5 pm), the country is paralyzed, notably the west, in Randstad, a...
18 November 2010
United States: interview of Lowell Turner, professor of Comparative Labor Relations at Cornell University on the French union movement
Lowell Turner. It was pretty exciting to see millions of people in the street. There is a push toward austerity budgeting across Europe and America. But, when governments try to take away...
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
France: Bayer puts female health and inclusive parenthood at the centre of its equality policy
In a new agreement on gender equality highlighted by mind RH, Bayer commits to strengthening its parenthood policy. Furthermore, the company is anticipating pay transparency and introducing...
25 September 2026
2
Germany: Volkswagen cancels almost all collective bargaining agreements signed with IG Metall
The Volkswagen brand announced on 30 September that it is terminating 10 of its 13 internal collective bargaining agreements, effective 31 December 2026. The announcement, which the carmaker...
1 October 2026
3
France: final document on the work of the Labour, Employment and Pensions Conference
After six months of discussions between French social partners, the guarantors of the Labour, Employment and Pensions Conference submitted the conclusions of the discussions to the Prime Minister...
17 September 2026
4
Germany: Employers’ representatives seek to limit the rights of works councils
The Employers' Federation of German Employers' Associations (Bundesvereinigung der Deutschen Arbeitgeberverbände - BDA) published a report at the end of September in which it proposes a...
5
Germany: working time dispute between Mercedes and the IG Metall Union
The news. At the beginning of September, Mercedes-Benz asked employee representatives and the IG Metall union to agree to an increase in the weekly working time from 35 to 40 hours, without any...
16 September 2026
6
Germany: major day of union action in the automotive industry ahead of collective bargaining
A few weeks before the start of collective bargaining in the German metalworking sector, the IG Metall trade union mobilised nearly 175,000 workers across more than 200 industrial sites on 21...
22 September 2026