Controversy over introduction of sixth week of statutory leave

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In October 1999, both the OGB-L trade union confederation and the Greens political party called for the introduction of a sixth week of paid annual leave in Luxembourg as part of a general reduction in working time. The demand has been vehemently opposed by the Employers' Liaison Committee.

On 27 October 1999, the Luxembourg Confederation of Independent Trade Unions (Onofhängege Gewerkschafts-Bond Lëtzebuerg, OGB-L) presented a demand for a sixth week of statutory paid holiday, as part of a general reduction in working hours. The current legal entitlement is five weeks. The call was delivered as a riposte to the attitudes of employers which, according to OGB-L, are "no longer behaving like social partners".

With over 200 collective agreements in the private sector and almost half the active labour force in membership, OGB-L hopes to make headway in negotiations on working time reductions. However, it believes that it will be easier to achieve a sixth week of statutory leave than to cut weekly or monthly working hours, particularly as enterprises now grant average annual leave of 27-28 days.

On 4 November, the political party, the Greens (Déi Gréng), presented a draft law with similar aims, thus demonstrating its support for the OGB-L proposal. For the Greens, "it is not acceptable that the work demanded of employees in order to swell an enterprise's economic value-added should not be rewarded by substantial reductions in working time. In this context, additional annual leave might be a way of compensating employees for inconveniences caused by working irregular hours."

In a statement issued on 5 November, the Employers' Liaison Committee (Comité de Liaison Patronal) expressed its indignation that a demand for a sixth week of statutory leave had come from one of unions that had signed the tripartite agreement of 18 April 1998 on the Luxembourg National Action Plan (NAP) for employment, based on the EU Employment Guidelines (LU9805157F). The employers' point is that an across-the-board increase in paid leave would be another way of achieving an across-the-board reduction in working hours by statutory means, while the tripartite NAP meetings had decided not to pursue a statutory reduction in working hours, leaving the matter to be determined by the social partners at sector or enterprise level (LU9903197F).

The Employers' Liaison Committee argues that "the unions are again breaching the spirit of the tripartite meetings - yet it is the self-same unions that in turn criticise the employers for not abiding by it." The Committee finds the OGB-L claim provocative and, in the spirit of the tripartite meetings, refuses to discuss the matter.