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Coordinating collective bargaining – Summer
College TETYK Hotel – Protaras, Paralimni13 – 952.45 This event had the
support of the European Union |
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The
contents of the seminar
How
collective bargaining can contribute to overcome the consequences of the
financial and economic crisis was the main topic during a seminar organised by
the European Trade Union Institute and the European Federation of Metal
Workers’ in
Representatives
from
The country
reports gave us a good overview of the difficult situation today in
Mainly two
kind of collective bargaining instruments used to various degrees in national
policy mixes can be found:
Gaining-Time-Instruments
Stimulus-Instruments
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Béla Galgóczi, senior researcher at ETUI gave an overview of the collective bargaining climate in the European metal sector at the light of macroeconomic and sectoral trends triggering the participants to comment on their specific national situations. (His PPT presentation can be downloaded from the Document section of this Web site.) During a following session a lively discussion took place around how such crisis could be avoided in the future. All the participants agreed that wages and purchasing power have to be raised to base the EU economy on stronger demand rather then on financial bubbles.
The Unions in
Some observers assume, that the bottom of the
crisis is reached. The unions still expect massive job losses and ongoing
enormous problems in the covered sectors.
Keeping people in the job is the most important
goal. The plants have to stay open.
Gaining time short term work
Wage development is also important in order to
increase purchasing power.
Some of the used instruments will run out
shortly
The problems connected with concessional bargaining were explored by Ronald Janssen, introducing the discussion topic for a working group session about what could be the options in coming collective bargaining rounds.
Go for the ‘New Social Deal’
Strengthen wage
formation and collective bargaining
European policy
coordination on:
Insuring minimum
levels of wages exist in all labour markets
Enlarging the
coverage rate of collectively bargained wages
Force of the
intellectual argument on our side (fair wages as a sustainable engine of demand
and growth instead of financial bubbles).
But not the force
of the ‘emotional’ argument’ (‘We are all in the same boat together’), nor the
political power balance.
Defend and implement coordination on existing formulae
‘Inflation plus
productivity’
Looking at
‘trends’ over several years :
Allows to
‘digest’ 2008/2009 collapse in productivity (which would be followed by a surge
in productivity performance anyway?)
However, danger
of allowing wage moderation now, hoping (vainly?) to recover wage moderation in
coming years.
If so, don’t we
need a second (internal) line of defence ? (such as ‘at least inflation’ or at
least ‘some’ real wage increase).
Do we maintain
the reference to effective inflation? In doing so, we will consolidate ‘too
low’ inflation? Do we take price stabilility inflation of 2% instead of
effective inflation into account?
The working groups reported that:
Short time work
or temporary layoffs (backed by public money) and collective agreements in
different forms) are an important instrument throughout the European unions.
Often a
difference between policies on international, national, sectoral and local
policies can be observed.
Precarious workers
(e.g. temporary agency workers) were the first who had to leave the companies.
The shared view is, that companies will make an attempt to reorganize and to
force more employees to accept precarious working conditions.
The discussion
about the reduction of working time as one of the instruments to overcome the
crisis is led in nearly all European countries.
Short time
solutions will soon run out and need to be extended.
Long term /
strategic solutions are often not in place. There needs to be an implementation
of strategies to overcome the crisis and to establish future labour relations.
In the future an
extended role of European coordination (especially also on company level) as
well as more common demands and policies will have to be developed and
implemented by the affiliates of the EMF
René Johanssen,
Bart Samijn, Deputy General Secretary, EMF showed some examples of European Framework Agreements as a tool to deal with restructuring in the framework of the crisis.
The final plenary debate led to the conclusions that:
The financial and
economic crisis was caused by liberalism, not by high labour costs.
Working hours can
be cut and flexible systems can be introduced in order to secure employment and
create more jobs.
However, reduced
working hours must not be accompanied by lower wages. On the contrary, higher
wages or at least maintained purchasing power is necessary to keep up the
demand and to promote economic recovery.
Some useful links
The European
Metal Workers' Federation
INTERNATIONAL
TRADE UNION CONFEDERATION - CONFEDERATION INTERNATIONALE DES SYNDICATS
EUROPEAN
TRADE UNION CONFEDERATION - CONFEDERATION EUROPEENNE DES SYNDICATS
EUROPEAN TRADE UNION INSTITUTE -
INSTITUT SYNDICAL EUROPEEN
INTERNATIONAL
LABOUR ORGANISATION - ORGANISATION INTERNATIONALE DU TRAVAIL