This summer, the media have reported that there are serious problems with social dialogue at the ECB, despite the European institutions being advocates of social dialogue and collective bargaining. Why is social dialogue at the ECB in a state of crisis?
It should be borne in mind that the statute of the ECB, which was created by the Treaty of Maastricht, in 1991, was drafted by a college of central bank governors, without any real concern for the people who would be working there. This statute grants the committee of governors powers to fix the terms of employment of the bank’s staff. As a result, ECB staff are not subject either to the staff regulations of European Union officials, or to the social legislation of the country where the bank has its head office, namely Germany.
As far as social dialogue is concerned, no European directive clearly applies to us, and we have a staff committee, set up by the ECB, which is consulted on terms of employment. During his term in office, and at the time of a proposed reform of the ECB’s pension scheme, Jean-Claude Trichet announced that he would recognise the IPSO trade union once we came to represent 15% of total staff numbers, a figure that seemed beyond reach.
However, his reform was so unpopular that we were recognised as a representative body. That shows how social dialogue has always been a complicated issue, but this time, under the current governor, Christine Lagarde, things have really come to a head! She won’t reply directly to any of our letters; she never holds bilateral meetings with us in the way that Jean-Claude Trichet did, on a regular basis; she’s trying to side-step us by setting up staff “networks” (for women, ethnic minorities, LGBT+); she’s encouraging people to put themselves forward for staff elections in order to reduce IPSO’s influence; and she’s embarking on reforms of staff representation, which are primarily intended to cut the resources available to staff representatives and to reduce trade-union influence.
We’ve all had enough of this, and on this little island, where no European social legislation applies, staff are now at the end of their tether! According to an IPSO internal survey, 39% of ECB staff are experiencing burnout, 9% report having suicidal thoughts and 77% complain about favouritism in the areas of recruitment and promotion.
