International Paper: agreement establishing the EWC
This agreement, subject to British law, established a European Works Council where “central management will provide transnational information relating to its operations in the European Union (EU)...
Belgium: agreement on working and wage conditions for workers that aren’t covered by a joint committee
Residual committee. In Belgium, employers and union organizations negotiate working and pay conditions within the framework of sectoral joint committees. Yet, CP 100, created in 1074, is a...
Netherlands: new collective agreement in metalworking and electrotechnical engineering
n the heavy industry in the Netherlands will keep enjoying early retirement at 62 thanks to the new collective agreement signed on January 25 by the FME employers’ organization and the FNV...
Belgium: workers march and question businesses’ notional interests
Tense social context. These past few weeks, announcements of mass layoffs poured in Belgium. Opel Antwerp is going to close, putting 2,600 jobs at risk. In Jupille, next to Liege, AB InBev unions...
Germany: Federal Labor Court condemns booming low wages and thinks about removing “tariff unity” in businesses
The annual press conference of the Federal Labor Court was tainted with the economic crisis. Statistics and data Mrs. Schmidt presented on January 27 confirmed that.
Italy: CGIL declares general strike for March 12
“The need to face the economic crisis and its impact on employment, the urgency to act at once to bring balance to the tax burden in favor of salaried workers and pensioners and amend the...
Germany: Federal Administrative Court cancels minimum wage in postal sector
al Administrative Court ruled, on January 28 in Leipzig, that the procedure which led the German government, in 2007, to extend to the entire postal sector the minimum wage negotiated between the...
Germany: 200,000 agency workers get a 5% wage increase
An agreement which took time. The agreement signed affects about one in three temporary employees. It will enter into force on May 1, 2010 and expire on April 30, 2012. It provides for a first...
Slovakia: Parliament passed an act on extension of collective agreements
This reform will be a crucial change for many employers, because as of now the employers can get covered by the higher level collective agreement without any previous participation in the...
Germany: IG-Metall sets employment as its top priority for the coming collective negotiations in the metal sector
New situation calls for new negotiations. Traditionally, metalworking and technical engineering, two key sectors for the German industry with about 3.45 million employees, open bargaining fire...
United States: for the first time in the history of American unionism, there are more unionized civil servants than employees
The average American union member is a civil servant. For the first time since the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) started looking into these statistics, the number of unionized workers in civil...
Italy: Fiom-CGIL proposes own-initiative bill on union democracy
Reforming union democracy. The campaign to gather the 50,000 signatures required to introduce to Parliament the own-initiative bill on union democracy, initially planned in January (see our...
Germany: more calls for wage moderation even though Germans’ real income is decreasing
Increasing wages, decreasing incomes. At first glance, the evaluation of collectively-agreed wage increases (7.9 million employees) is satisfactory. In average, wages increased of 2.6% in 2009 (3%...
Portugal: negotiations paused between retailing employers and unions
Formal disagreements. The CESP chose to block negotiations with employers because of the latter’s administrative blockades. The union says the employers’ organization tried to get union leaders to...
Austria: banking employees get a 1.36% raise
to go through the four statutory negotiating meetings to reach, on Tuesday, January 19, a wage agreement. The sector’s 80,000 employees will see their salary increase of 0.75% on February 1...
Colombia: 3.64% minimum wage increase after failed negotiations between the social partners
a 3.64% minimum wage increase after the recurrent stalemate of negotiations between unions and employers on the issue. The increase is lower than planned inflation in 2010 – 2%, like in...
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