Publications

At the beginning of February 1998, the media reported that the 56-year-old
managing director of the Stora forestry company, who was about to leave his
job after six years, would receive a "golden handshake" (or severance
package) worth SEK 58 million. In the first two years following his
resignation, he would receive SEK 2.8 million and from the age of 60 a large
pension. What made the information conspicuous, apart from the large sum, was
that the managing director was said not to have been dismissed but to have
left on his own initiative, and that his terms of resignation had been
renegotiated and improved shortly before he had made his decision.

Owing to the use of "social shock absorbers" to ease the blow of
redundancies, the restructuring of Italian industry - especially in the 1980s
- has proceeded without excessive social costs, though with substantial
economic costs to the state. A reform of these measures is envisaged as part
of the current reform of the welfare state and broader redefinition of
employment policies. Moreover, a still unresolved issue is the definition of
new measures to deal with the employment crisis in the service sector.

The Federation of Transport Workers' Unions in the European Union (FST) and
theEuropean Community Shipowners' Association (ECSA) agreed a joint text on
working time and time off aboard ship in December 1997. The approximately
128,000 EU nationals and 26,000 non-EU nationals employed in the maritime
sector are among the workers excluded from the provisions of the EU Directive
(93/104/EC) on certain aspects of the organisation of working time.

At the end of January 1998, German unemployment reached a new post-war record
high, with more than 4.8 million people registered as unemployed. The
announcement of the latest unemployment figures on 5 February was accompanied
by nationwide protests of unemployed people all over Germany. The protests
were organised by independent organisations of jobless people, self-help
groups and trade unions' jobless committees and groups. The unions played an
important role in coordinating, organising and supporting the protests.

In February 1998, it was announced that the Government is to draw up a
voluntary code on combating age discrimination in recruitment. The statement
came as the charity, Age Concern, launched an "Age discrimination awareness
campaign". A survey conducted for Age Concern estimates that more than 18
million adults have experienced age discrimination in employment, health or
welfare. The study found that 70% of the population believe age
discrimination exists, while only half of those who reported it were aged
over 45, showing that it is a problem that affects most ages.

January-February 1998 saw a dispute at the Spanish airline, Iberia, organised
by the pilots belonging to the SEPLA trade union. The grounds for the dispute
related to the planned restructuring of the company.

Following the breakdown of talks with employers' representatives,
Luxembourg's two main trade unions approached the Government in January 1998
and set out their proposals for transposing the EU Directive on parental
leave.

In August 1997 the authorities rejected a bid made by a group of activists
from the Austrian Freedom Party (Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs, FPÖ) to
form an association called the Austrian Free Trade Union (Freie Gewerkschaft
Österreichs, FGÖ) (AT9705113N [1]). They argued that its proposed name
might give rise to confusion with a social democrat organisation, the
Austrian Federation of Free Trade Unions (Österreichischer Bund freier
Gewerkschaften, ÖBFG). The ÖBFG is dormant but social democrat trade
unionists have kept the name alive in order to have something to fall back on
in case the Austrian Trade Union Federation (Österreichischer
Gewerkschaftsbund, ÖGB), the sole formal trade union existing in Austria,
should ever disband.

[1] www.eurofound.europa.eu/ef/observatories/eurwork/articles/non-gb-union-to-be-created

At its general council meeting on 10 February 1998, the LO trade union
confederation voted in favour of industry-level settlements in the spring
1998 bargaining round in Norway's private sector. In addition, LO wants to
bargain with the NHO employers' confederation over the principles which are
to apply to the forthcoming reform of further education and training. LO
would like to see these negotiations finalised before the sectoral bargaining
commences, but NHO has rejected such talks.

Belgium proudly boasts one of the oldest consumer prices indices in the
world. Since the First World War, the government has carefully monitored how
much Belgians spend on their daily consumption needs. What started as a
rather rough indicator in 1914 has developed over the years into a refined
instrument for measuring the price increases of different consumer products
and the inflation rate.