IR Notes

Here is one of the tangible benefits of the agreement reached, on 24 January, between the European Commission, the European Council and the European Parliament with a view to adopting the proposal for a directive on work-life balance for parents and carers. The proposal (see IR Notes no. 75) still has to be formally adopted by the Council and the Parliament and will then be published in the PJEU in the spring. So Member States will have three years in which to transpose the directive. Paternity leave, which does not exist under current EU law, will have to be paid, not at normal salary level, but at least at sick pay level. Other benefits include: 1. an adjustment to the current right to parental leave. This remains at four months, but two of these months cannot be transferred to the other parent and will be paid in order to encourage fathers to take it. Employees will be able to request flexible uptake, which is left to Member States to define.  2. A completely new carers’ leave of five days per year in the event of illness of a close relative. The directive does not stipulate that this must be paid, but States are encouraged to consider a suitable form of payment, again to encourage men to take up this entitlement. 3. The right, for parents of children up to the age of 8 and carers, to request flexible working arrangements, such as reduced or modified hours or teleworking, with the guarantee that, at the end of the period of leave, they can return to the same, or an equivalent, job and their original working time arrangements. Furthermore, the right to take time off work on grounds of force majeure for urgent family reasons (accident or illness) which make the immediate presence of the worker indispensable – already provided for by the directive on parental leave (repealed by this new directive) – is maintained. The Commission sees it as “a huge step towards a more social Europe, which shows the true spirit of the Pillar of Social Rights” (see press release). However, Coface Families Europe, a network of civil society associations, is more measured in its response, describing it as “a step in the right direction” (see press release), but with a number of drawbacks: 1. a lack of harmonisation in terms of pay, with decisions on payment for parental leave and carers’ leave being left to Member States, which was welcomed by the employers’ organisation BusinessEurope; 2. the restriction of rights, with the opportunity for Member States to introduce length of service requirements to qualify for this leave. For its part, the European Trade Union Confederation welcomes the compromise, although it is not happy about the lengthy transposition period (three years) (see press release).

A paid public holiday cannot be restricted to employees who belong to a church: the Court of Justice has issued a ruling on an Austrian case concerning the possibility of granting a paid public holiday solely to people who are members of a religious organisation (CJEU, 22 January 2019, case C-193/17, Cresco Investigation GmbH). In Austria, Good Friday is only a paid public holiday for members of certain churches. If an employee who is a member of one of these churches works on that day, he or she is entitled to an indemnity. An employee, who is not a member of any of these churches, believes he was discriminated against by having been denied an indemnity for work he did on Good Friday and is, therefore, seeking an indemnity from his employer. The Court of Justice ruled that a law under which, firstly, Good Friday is a public holiday solely for workers who are members of certain Christian churches and, secondly, only these workers, if required to work on that public holiday, are entitled to an indemnity, constitutes direct discrimination on grounds of religion. Such a law cannot be justified either on the grounds of measures necessary to protect freedom of religion or on the grounds of specific measures to offset disadvantages due to religion.

Wage agreement in the metalworking industry: the social partners in the metalworking industry have reached an agreement on wages for the 110,000 employees and approximately 17,000 apprentices in the sector. The collective agreement, which is valid for 12 months, provides for an increase of 3.3% from 1 January. Apprentices’ wages have increased by 7.1%. In order to allow for the recent reform which allows the length of the working day to be extended to 12 hours, the agreement introduces an additional 10-minute break for a working day lasting more than 10 hours (see press release issued by the Pro-GE trade union).

• Positive action: on 11 January, the Council of Ministers, at the second reading stage, approved a draft royal decree which seeks to oversee the implementation of positive action measures by private sector companies (see press release).

• Additional leave: on 11 January, the Government Council adopted the bill which seeks, firstly, to declare Europe Day (9 May) a statutory public holiday and, secondly, to increase statutory annual paid leave – currently 25 days – to 26 days for private sector employees and civil servants.

Creation of European Works Councils: on 18 November 2018, the digital security group Idemia (18,000 employees worldwide, including 4,700 in the EU) signed a European Works Council agreement (not yet available on the IR Share website). The signatories “agree that the United Kingdom will still be covered after Brexit”. An information and/or consultation procedure will begin at European level and will then, if necessary, be implemented simultaneously at local level. The national representation bodies receive “the opinion expressed by the European Works Council before finalising their own consultation procedure”. The council can arrange to be assisted by a representative of the European trade union federation IndustriAll, which was a signatory to the agreement. Additionally, the Westinghouse company (3,300 employees in the EU) signed a European Works Council agreement on 11 October 2018.

Extending the powers of the European Works Council: on 10 January, the British paper and packaging group DS Smith (28,500 employees) signed a revised European Works Council agreement which extends the council’s role. The management and the EWC had already adopted an employee charter in 2017 and signed a European Protocol on Heat Stress and Discomfort in 2018. The new agreement is one of the most comprehensive to be signed in recent years. The European Works Council can have up to 50 members to represent employees from the “European countries” in which the group operates and the scope of application is not limited solely to Member States of the European Union. The agreement includes several appendices which set out the roles and duties of those involved (member’s role, secretary’s role…) and of the sub-committees set up to represent the group’s different activities and geographical regions and to deal with specific matters. The select committee meets 12 times a year and can both issue opinions and set up working groups. Information relating to transnational issues will be passed to the select committee before it is disseminated at national or local level.

Opening of negotiations: the tyre manufacturer Michelin will soon be opening negotiations with representatives of trade union organisations from the different regions and the international trade-union federations IndustriAll Global Union and IndustriAll Europe with a view to setting up a global works council. “In accordance with initial discussions”, explains Christian Bradier (CFDT), secretary of the European Works Council, “the global council, in which all members of the European Works Council would participate, would meet twice a year. It would initially include two representatives from each of the major countries (Canada, United States, Brazil and Thailand)”.

Prevention of sexual harassment in the workplace: on 17 January, the international trade union federation IUF and the Spanish hotel chain Meliá Hotels International signed an agreement on preventing sexual harassment in the workplace, the first such agreement between the IUF and a hotel chain. This agreement takes the form of an appendix to the international framework agreement signed in 2014 (see press release).

• International framework agreement: following the adoption of a number of texts between the management and its European Works Council over the past ten years (Joint declaration on equal opportunities and non-discrimination in 2009, Joint declaration on responsible sales in 2015 and joint declaration on work-life balance in 2017), the management of the Italian bank UniCredit signed a global framework agreement with UNI Global Union on 23 January (see press releases from UNI Europa and UniCredit).


• Suspension of a transnational agreement: the IndustriAll Global Union federation takes the view that the vehicle manufacturer Volkswagen “consistently refuses to accord the same rights” to its workers in its Chattanooga (United States) factory as it does to its workers in the rest of the world (see press release). Therefore, on 21 January, it decided to suspend the global agreement with Volkswagen, although it stopped short of cancelling it.

• Opposition to the Alstom-Siemens merger: on 20 January, representatives of the French and Belgian trade unions at Alstom met with the European Commissioner for Competition, Margrethe Vestager. They reiterated their opposition to the proposed merger – currently under investigation by the Commission – of the railway divisions of the French group with those of the German Siemens group.

Repairing the devastating effects of global inequality: on 22 January, the Global commission on the future of work, set up by the ILO in its centenary year, presented its report containing 10 recommendations to stop us heading “into a world that widens existing inequalities and uncertainties” (see press release). “We propose”, explains the commission, “a human-centred agenda for the future of work” that puts “people and the work they do at the centre of economic and social policy and business practice” (see report summary). The commission proposes 1. “a universal guarantee for workers”, regardless of their status (employee, self-employed, undeclared), and calls on the ILO to “give urgent attention to its implementation”.  2. Universal social protection from birth to old age. 3. The introduction of an “international governance system for digital labour platforms” to ensure that platforms (and their clients) respect certain minimum rights and protections.
> see also the reactions of IndustriAll Global Union and the German and French Ministers of Employment.