Strike in building sector avoided at 11th hour

Download article in original language : LU0007140NFR.DOC

Following lengthy negotiations, and with a strike looming, a new collective agreement was signed for Luxembourg's building sector in June 2000. The deal disregards the opportunities for working time flexibility opened up by legislation adopted in 1999, and limits its scope to modest pay rises.

After negotiations over a new collective agreement lasting almost 20 months, the trade union bargaining commission for the building sector (Grande commission tarifaire syndicale du bâtiment), which covers construction and allied trades and represents over 30,000 workers, announced that talks with the employers had broken down on 20 May 2000.

A meeting described as "the last chance" took place at the National Conciliation Office (Office National de Conciliation, ONC) on 19 June 2000, just as the Luxembourg Confederation of Independent Trade Unions (Onofhängege Gewerkschafts-Bond Lëtzebuerg, OGB-L), the majority union in the building sector, had started on an extensive, largely poster-based, campaign to urge workers to come out on strike. This followed a referendum in which over 93% of building workers had rejected the progress made in the negotiations and decided on a general strike.

The stumbling-block throughout the talks was the employers' demand for greater working time flexibility; this was mainly triggered by the working time provisions of the law of 19 February 1999, which introduced the National Action Plan for employment (LU9903197F). The employers sought a one-year reference period for averaging out working hours, in order to compensate for hours lost due to bad weather, mainly through Saturday working. The unions opposed this demand, fearing "total deregulation of working time mechanisms, thereby triggering an uncontrollable process that could lead to compulsory Saturday working".

In June, after five hours of talks at the ONC, the construction sector social partners reached a new agreement, which provides for:

• the employers to withdraw their demand for the introduction of flexible working, and retention of the previous working time provisions based on the terms of the law of 9 December 1970 on blue-collar working hours;

• the setting up of an institute designed to introduce opportunities for additional employee training;

• collectively agreed hourly pay rates to be increased by LUF 10 on 1 June 2000, LUF 5 on 1 January 2001 and LUF 6 on 1 January 2002 (a rise of around 5.1% over three years);

• actual hourly pay rates to be increased by LUF 10 on 1 June 2000 and LUF 5 on 1 January 2002 (a rise of around 3.5% over three years).

The outcome of these negotiations, which abandoned all idea of working time flexibility in this key sector, is likely to have serious repercussions in all sectors. The somewhat controversial provisions of the law of 19 February 1999 will probably be jettisoned in the near future (LU0006138F).