Publications

The World Trade Organisation (WTO) held its fourth interministerial meeting
in Doha in November 2001, and the Italian social partners took the
opportunity to express their views on the WTO's role. According to the
Confindustria employers' confederation, the role of the WTO as a body
regulating world trade should be strengthened. The Italian trade union
confederations are highly critical of the fact that the WTO does not concern
itself with social matters.

In November 2001, in accordance with the recent controversial Law on Foreign
Persons, the Spanish government proposed the quota of non-EU immigrants for
2002. The quota and its composition failed to please the social partners, and
seems unlikely to solve the problems of mass immigration.

In November 2001, the Spanish airline Iberia announced a redundancy procedure
affecting some 10% of its workforce, as part of a series of measures to
respond to the downturn in the air transport industry. Over the following
month, management and trade unions negotiated the terms of the workforce
reduction, which will mainly involve non-renewal of temporary contracts,
pre-retirement, voluntary redundancies and temporary suspensions, along with
greater flexibility.

In late 2001, the Spanish economy is beginning to suffer the effects of the
international economic downturn. In response, the Ministry of the Economy has
encouraged employers' organisations and trade unions to conclude a central
agreement on wage moderation and the reform of collective bargaining
structures, and such a pact seems on the cards The first to suffer in the
current 'crisis of expectations' have been employees on temporary contracts,
which have not been renewed, underlining fears about the vulnerability of
temporary employment to variations in the economic cycle.

On 23 November 2001, the Swedish Union of Journalists (Svenska
Journalistförbundet, SJF) gave notice to the Swedish Newspaper Publishers'
Association (Svenska Tidningsutgivarföreningen, TU) that industrial action
would start in newspaper companies on 4 December. SJF is the trade union
organising Swedish journalists of all kinds in all media, and has 19,000
members of whom about 8,000 work on daily newspapers. TU is the trade and
employers' organisation for almost all newspaper publishers and other
companies in the Swedish media industry.

The European social dialogue process has come a long way since the launch of
the so-called 'Val Duchesse' process by the then European Commission
president, Jacques Delors, in 1985. The social dialogue process at
intersectoral level (EU0001224F [1]) has produced a wealth of joint texts,
including three agreements which have been given legal force by a Council
Directive - on parental leave [2] in 1995, part-time work [3] in 1997
(EU9706131F [4]) and fixed-term work [5] in 1999 (EU9901147F [6]). The most
recent attempt by the central social partners to conclude an agreement, on
the issue of temporary agency work, failed in May 2001 (EU0106215N [7]).
However, the process is still very much alive, as witnessed by the current
negotiations over a voluntary agreement on the subject of teleworking
(EU0111102N [8]), in addition to a range of negotiations on other subjects
such as lifelong learning, which will in all probability result in joint
texts or recommendations rather than framework agreements.

[1] www.eurofound.europa.eu/ef/observatories/eurwork/articles/industrial-relations-undefined/divergent-views-on-future-role-of-social-dialogue
[2] http://europa.eu.int/smartapi/cgi/sga_doc?smartapi!celexapi!prod!CELEXnumdoc&lg=en&numdoc=31996L0034&model=guichett
[3] http://europa.eu.int/smartapi/cgi/sga_doc?smartapi!celexapi!prod!CELEXnumdoc&lg=en&numdoc=31997L0081&model=guichett
[4] www.eurofound.europa.eu/ef/observatories/eurwork/articles/undefined/social-partners-reach-framework-agreement-on-part-time-work
[5] http://europa.eu.int/comm/employment_social/soc-dial/social/fixed_en.htm
[6] www.eurofound.europa.eu/ef/observatories/eurwork/articles/undefined-working-conditions/social-partners-reach-draft-framework-agreement-on-fixed-term-contracts
[7] www.eurofound.europa.eu/ef/observatories/eurwork/articles/temporary-agency-work-talks-break-down
[8] www.eurofound.europa.eu/ef/observatories/eurwork/articles/social-partners-begin-teleworking-talks

Since the adoption in 1993 of Directive (93/104/EC) on certain aspects of the
organisation of working time [1], the European Commission has been waiting
for the Danish government's final resolution of how this Directive should be
fully implemented in Denmark. In November 1999, the Danish government
received a formal letter of notice from the Commission requesting it to
ensure that the Directive was fully and correctly implemented. The government
replied that the Directive had been implemented through the collective
bargaining system and that there is no tradition in Denmark of statutory
regulation in the area of employment conditions and industrial relations
(DK0001164F [2]). The two main central social partner organisations, the
Confederation of Danish Trade Unions (Landsorganisationen i Danmark, LO) and
the Danish Employers' Confederation (Dansk Arbejdsgiverforeining, DA),
declared in this connection that they would guarantee that employees who were
not covered by a collective agreement would in practice be covered by the
provisions laid down in the Directive, while the government committed itself
to take action if it turned out that there were individuals whose rights were
not ensured in spite of this guarantee.

[1] http://europa.eu.int/smartapi/cgi/sga_doc?smartapi!celexapi!prod!CELEXnumdoc&lg=en&numdoc=31993L0104&model=guichett
[2] www.eurofound.europa.eu/ef/observatories/eurwork/articles/undefined-working-conditions/danish-model-maintained-by-implementation-of-eu-directives-through-collective-agreements

On 10 December 2001, the executive board of the IG Metall metalworkers' trade
union decided its basic orientations for the 2002 collective bargaining round
for the 3.6 million employees in the German metalworking industry. A new pay
agreement should run from 1 March 2002 and would normally have a duration of
12 months. The IG Metall board recommended to its regional collective
bargaining committees that they make claims for pay increases of between 5%
and 7%, which should be used for

In November 2001, Belgium's National Labour Council concluded a collective
agreement which introduces a right to breastfeeding breaks at work for
nursing mothers from July 2002. Employers must provide a suitable area for
employees who wish to use this right. The agreement brings Belgian provisions
into line with the International Labour Organisation's Convention No. 183 on
maternity protection and the European Social Charter.

Negotiations between the Professional Footballers' Association (PFA) and the
English Premier League (PL) began in August 2001 concerning the trade union's
share of the industry's television revenues - a longstanding arrangement to
enable the union to provide welfare and training services. An impasse was
reached because the PFA wanted to maintain its 5% share of revenues that had
greatly increased since the previous broadcasting deal. The union balloted
its 3,500 members over industrial action in support of its claim. All but 22
of the 2,315 votes cast were in favour of strike action. All league matches
in the top four divisions due to be televised live or for transmission of
highlights were therefore threatened by strike action on the weekend of 1
December 2001.