Employment relationship

A number of agreements on "good employment practices" signed in Spanish companies indicate a new direction in the 1998/9 collective bargaining round. The main features of these agreements are job creation and secure employment in exchange for wage moderation and flexibility, in order to allow

Against the background of persistent high unemployment, the issue of employment security has become one of the most important topics in German industrial relations (TN9710201S [1]). In recent years a growing number of so-called "employment pacts" (Beschäftigungspakte) have been agreed, in particular

The achievement of a positive balance between work organisation, productivity, innovation and employment has been a central concern of the European Union social policy agenda for some time. Moreover, it constitutes part of a broader agenda revolving around the adaptation of national economies

On 12 December 1998, negotiations opened for a new collective agreement for the 75,000 salaried employees in Austrian banking, due to take effect from 1 February 1999. The banks offered a pay increase of 1.1%, roughly equivalent to the rate of inflation. This position was maintained in further

Luxembourg's National Action Plan on employment, in response to the EU Employment Guidelines, had still not been adopted by the Chamber of Deputies in January 1999. The Council of State continued to express formal opposition on a number of points, while the consultative Chamber representing white

From 1 January 1999, the date on which the Flexibility and Security Act came into force, several areas of Dutch labour law have begun to look quite different. There has already been a degree of controversy about some of the potential effects, such as the cost of terminating an employment contract

In times of high unemployment, increasing competition in the private sector and public budget constraints, employees tend to experience considerable worry about their jobs. The threat of workforce reductions and redundancies, mostly felt at shopfloor level, very much affects and influences the work

In April 1997 the European Commission published a Green Paper on Partnership for a new organisation of work [1] (EU9707134F [2]). It argued that the key to improving competitiveness and employment was "through a better organisation of work at the workplace, based on high skill, high trust and high