IR Notes

While the European Commission has launched a preliminary inquiry into the decision of the German government to apply the legal minimum wage to foreign truck drivers transiting its territory or performing cabotage operations, the French government has decided to follow its German neighbour. Indeed, according to the press release of the French ministry of economic affairs (in French), the government has secured adoption of an amendment to a law, currently being discussed before parliament, to the effect that “any driver performing cabotage operations in connection with international transportation” should benefit “from the social rules and minimum wage in force in France”. The amendment also aims to ensure that “foreign hauliers which employ drivers in France without providing the necessary attestation can therefore be pursued for illegal working”. The text under discussion passes responsibility for compliance with French social regulations by foreign truck drivers to the French contractor. Details of how French legislation on the posting of workers is to apply to truck drivers will be contained in a decree. “The aim is to combat social dumping, as practised by foreign companies, and French companies too, which employ ” social optimisation”, by creating subsidiaries in other countries,” stated Alain Vidalies, the French Minister of State for Transport, Marine Affairs and Fisheries, on 17 February 2015. It remains to be seen how the Commission will view the rationale of these decisions vis-à-vis the principle of the free movement of goods and services. Having requested a moratorium on the German decision (see press release), the International Road Transport Union (IRU), representing employers in the road haulage sector, informed its members without adopting a position on the French decision. The European Transport Workers’ Federation (ETF) for its part, (see press release) lent its support to the German decision to apply the minimum wage to foreign truck drivers, as it did to the legislation introduced in Belgium (decree of 14 April 2014 in French and Dutch) and France (law No. 2014-790 of 10 July 2014, in French), where it supported the application of minimum rest periods. The Federation had previously welcomed a ruling by a Dutch court which had compelled a Dutch haulage company to apply the sectoral collective agreement to Hungarian drivers employed by its Hungarian subsidiary who were working in the Netherlands (see press release). The Commission, which is currently drawing up a series of measures concerning goods transport by road (the “road package”) cannot duck the issue, also raised by MEPs on the transport committee, and is scheduled to deliver its interpretation of European legislation in the spring (also see the Europaforum article, in French, 22.01.2015).

• Assistance from the European Globalisation Adjustment Fund: To help 250 former workers of Lufthansa Technik Airmotive Ireland and two of its suppliers to find new jobs, the European Commission on 6 February 2015 proposed to provide Ireland with 2.5 million euros (see Commission press release).

• Promoting teleworking in the insurance industry: The European social partners in the insurance sector on 10 February 2015 signed a joint declaration on telework. The text builds on the European Framework Agreement of 16 July 2002 concluded by the social partners at interprofessional level. The signatories believe that telework meets the needs of both employers – who benefit from better motivated staff – and employees, who enjoy greater flexibility in working hours and savings in time, money and stress due to reduced commutes. The declaration defines the different factors which must be considered in individual and collective telework agreements at industry and company level.


• Report on the development of female employment in the rail sector: The European social partners in the railway sector on 2 February 2015 published their third report on the application of the recommendations adopted in 2012 intended to improve the participation and integration of women in this industry. 38 companies took part in the survey, representing nearly 900,000 employees. The report highlights slight progress in the proportion of women employed, which increased from 19.5% in 2013 to 19.8% in 2014. In the ten countries which have taken part in all three surveys, a 1% increase has occurred since 2010. The proportion of women employed as drivers is very low, at 2% (but 21% in Sweden).

• Application of the minimum wage to posted workers: The Court of Justice of the European Union has returned an important judgement in a case concerning the application of the minimum wage set by two Finnish collective agreements, to 186 Polish workers posted to Finland by their Polish employer (CJEU 12 February 2015, case C 396/13, Sähköalojen ammattiliitto ry). The workers, who were employed on a construction site for a nuclear power station, were provided with accommodation 15 km away from the site. They submitted a claim for payment of several elements of remuneration which they considered as forming part of the minimum wage. Directive 96/71 on the posting of workers stipulates that posted workers must benefit from the “minimum rates of pay” of the host country, but does not define how this minimum wage is made up. This is a matter for the member states. The directive merely states that “allowances specific to the posting” (such as a posting bonus) “shall be considered to be part of the minimum wage”, unless they are paid in reimbursement of expenditure incurred on account of the posting, such as expenditure on travel, board and lodgings. In the eyes of the court, the daily and travel allowances are not intended to reimburse expenses actually incurred. They must therefore each be classified as an “allowance specific to the posting” and form part of the minimum wage. Responding to this ruling, the European Trade Union Confederation expressed satisfaction that “the equal pay principle has trumped social dumping and competition at all costs”. In practice, the ruling should encourage the social partners to agree on a definition of the minimum wage’s content and to make this information accessible to both employers and posted employees. In addition, the judgement makes clear that the minimum wage which must be paid to posted workers is not simply the amount of the legal or collectively agreed minimum wage, but that it may also be supplemented by other elements of remuneration which are linked to the employees’ work and which do not come under the reimbursement of amounts spent as a result of the posting. Therefore, the amount of the legal or collectively agreed minimum wage should not be arrived at as the cumulative sum of the different elements of remuneration. If this interpretation is correct, then case law does indeed limit the risk of social dumping by reconciling the total amount of remuneration to be paid to posted workers with that granted to those employed locally.

• Handover of power at the head of the Podkrepa confederation: At the 9th congress of the Confederation of Labour Podkrepa, the delegates on 9 February 2015 elected a new leadership team: Dimitar Manolov became president and Ioanis Parteniotis vice-president. The title of honorary president was bestowed on Konstantin Trenchev for his contribution to the confederation’s creation and development over a period of 26 years.


• Threat to tripartite consultation: The four representative employers’ organisations at national level (AICB, BIA, BCCI and CEIBG) threatened to quit the national council for tripartite cooperation if the government did not immediately modify its practice of accepting legislative amendments without consultation. They spoke out in a joint letter by way of a reminder that the council has not held any regular meetings since the end of November 2014 while, over the same period, the government has adopted important decisions concerning economic and social policy, such as an amendment of the social security code introducing a free choice of paying contributions to a universal pension fund or to the National Social Security Institute. The government rejects these accusations and considers that social dialogue plays an active role in key decisions.

• Adaptation of domestic law in line with the law of the EU: Law No. 12/2015 published on 22 January 2015 modifies domestic law to make it comply with the law of the EU on a number of issues: 1. From now on, the law states that temporary agency workers must receive the same rate of pay as employees of the user enterprise doing the same job. If no-one inside the user enterprise does the same job, the temporary agency worker’s salary must comply with the salary envisaged by the collective agreement applicable to the company. Previously, the only stipulation was that temporary agency workers should be paid on a par with the legal minimum wage. 2. Paid annual leave is in principle proportional to the work performed during the calendar year. From now on, the calculation of the period of paid leave will also take into account interruptions associated with sick leave, maternity leave, maternity protection or leave to look after a sick child. If the employee interrupts his paid leave to take one of these types of leave, the paid leave is extended by the same amount of time, or the employee can defer taking the days on which he is entitled to paid leave that he has not used. 3. From now on, in the event that invalidity causes an employment contract to be terminated, dismissal takes effect at the time when the medical decision determining invalidity is taken. Previously, the termination did not occur until the pension scheme took the decision to grant an invalidity pension, which prolonged the employee’s employment contract, although he was no longer able to work.

• Debate on equality between men and women: A vigorous debate is currently taking place in the trade union world about differences in salary between men and women. At the beginning of February, in the left-leaning daily newspaper Dagens Etc, the president of the Swedish municipal workers’ trade union, Annelie Nordström, denounced the unjustified wage gap between men and women, as well as the differences in working and pension conditions caused by women’s lower incomes throughout their working lives. The debate is less about the differences between men and women per se, but rather about the differences between workers in the public sector (80% of whom are women) and those employed in the exporting industries (80% of whom are men). The article questions the pay increases negotiated under the collective agreements of the exporting industries and which set the wage benchmark for the rest of the labour market. However, these pay rises are expressed as a percentage of salary, whereas the public sector trade unions are demanding increases in the real wage. The next round of wage bargaining at national level will take place in spring 2016, and these differences of opinion between trade unions will be aired when the time comes to establish a pay claim strategy next autumn. The leaders of the trade unions in the exporting industries have clearly stated that they do not intend to renounce the role of their agreements as a wage benchmark in order to obtain more wage equality between men and women and between the employees of the public and private sectors.

• Edenred: The installation agreement establishing a European works council within the Edenred group (6,000 employees) signed on 17 September 2014 is now available on IR Share. Apart from the case when a project affects two establishments in two different member states, the text provides for the translational character of a matter to be determined in consultation between the management and the secretary of the EWC. The EWC is made up of one member per country covered, without providing for any additional representatives relating to the size of the workforce.


• Famar: The agreement of 2 October 2014 concerning the creation of the European works council of the pharmaceutical group Famar (3,272 employees) has also been placed online on IR Share. Encompassing the core provisions of directive 2009/38, this agreement shows that, even in a group of modest size, it is possible to arrive at an agreement providing for quality information and consultation while remaining inside a sustainable economic framework.

Gamesa: The Spanish group Gamesa (6,000 employees, of which 36% are employed in Spain), specialising in renewable energies, on 18 February 2015, signed a global framework agreement with the IndustriAll Global Union international trade union federation. This agreement, which complies with the recent guidelines issued by IndustriAll (see IR Notes 25), provides for a coordination and oversight body made up of representatives of management and IndustriAll, as well as three Spanish trade unions (FITAG-UGT, MCA-UGT and CCOO Industria) (see press releases of IndustriAll and Gamesa).

• Recommendations for youth employment: The Research Service of the European Parliament has published a report on the various employment policies targeting young people aged under 25 in the EU member states. The document ends with recommendations, including enhancing individualised support for young people by the public employment services; prioritising apprenticeships and training courses in the private sector, which more frequently lead to stable jobs than those offered by the public or voluntary sectors; and also combating discrimination against young people on the basis of directive 2000/78, which is generally invoked to fight discrimination against older workers.


• Working conditions by sector: Based on the outcome of the 5th European Working Conditions Survey, the Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (Eurofound) has published its results broken down by sector. A comparison can thus be made between the working conditions prevalent in more than 30 sectors in Europe.

While the European Union has never intervened in relation to the termination of individual contracts, it’s a different story when it comes to collective redundancies. A short time after the first oil crisis, which triggered numerous restructurings, the member states adopted directive 75/129, which was subsequently recast in the shape of directive 98/59 of 20 July 1998. This text makes information and consultation of workers’ representatives compulsory, with the aim of finding alternative solutions to the redundancies. The directive applies to collective redundancies (whose threshold is defined according to the size of the workforce) occurring in an establishment over a certain period (30 or 90 days). The European Court of Justice is due to rule on the definition of what constitutes an establishment in the near future. See the Eurofound European Industrial Relations Dictionary (in English) for further information.