Tripartite Committee suspends drafting of new NAP and sets up working party

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Luxembourg's Tripartite Coordination Committee has been seeking to draw up a National Action Plan (NAP) for employment, in response to the EU Employment Guidelines for 2000. However, following persistently divergent interpretations of the existing NAP's provisions on working time organisation, in May 2000 the social partners suspended the drafting of a new Plan. A small working party was established to clear up the outstanding points of contention, and was due to submit its definitive conclusions by 15 June 2000.

The Chamber of Deputies approved the Luxembourg 1998-9 National Action Plan (NAP) for employment, in response to the EU Employment Guidelines, on 12 February 1999 (LU9903197F). The Plan incorporated new legislation on the organisation of working time. Since its adoption, however, the social partners have not reached agreement on the interpretation of the NAP's terms, and have been criticising one another for not honouring previous undertakings. This resulted in a national conference involving negotiators of collective agreements in May 1999, to examine the implementation of the NAP through bargaining (LU9906108N).

The new government that came to power in August 1999 (LU9909111N) arranged for a number of meetings to take place within the ambit of the Tripartite Coordination Committee (Comité de Coordination Tripartite) from 27 March 2000 onwards. The main aim was to draw up a new NAP for 2000 to be forwarded to the European Commission no later than 1 May. However, a number of significant problems emerged during the negotiations within the tripartite committee.

Pay and bargaining

A number of difficulties arose early on in the negotiations with regard to pay policy. At a tripartite meeting on 14 April 2000, the employers raised the possibility of departing from the usual practice of collective bargaining, particularly as far as the setting of pay rates was concerned. When this position, which would in all probability have held up the negotiations, was abandoned, it was possible for talks to resume. The social partners subsequently managed a rapprochement, and finally came to an agreement not to abandon the collective agreements system. The parties reiterated that they were ready to do everything possible under the law, including the terms of the NAP law of 12 February 1999, in order to conclude impending pay agreements.

The organisation of working time

Disagreement mainly centred on the reference period over which weekly working hours may be averaged out. The 1999 legislation allows working hours to be varied as long as average weekly hours, calculated over a reference period of four consecutive weeks, do not exceed either 40 hours or the normal maximum weekly hours as fixed by a collective agreement. A collective agreement may vary the four-week reference period, as long as it does not exceed a 12-month maximum. Employers and the trade unions in the committee argued fiercely about the four-week reference period, with the employers claiming that it was a minimum, while the unions argued that the reference period could be shorter in certain cases.

The Prime Minister, as president of the Tripartite Coordination Committee, came down on the side of the trade unions: he said that some collective agreements signed by the unions incorporated a period of reference that was longer than four weeks, and that equally the employers therefore had to accept shorter periods. The Prime Minster stressed that a period of four weeks was still the rule, but that in certain cases the reference period should be negotiated in the light of specific features of the enterprise.

It seems that the employers have finally agreed to the possibility of reference periods of fewer than four weeks. However, fundamental disagreements persist on:

• the principle itself of the four-week reference period;

• the details of implementing the work organisation plan that has to be produced by employers five days before the beginning of a reference period, which sets out the organisation of working time for the whole of the reference period; and

• ways of dealing with unforeseeable events or cases of force majeure.

Working group set up

Because of persistent disagreement on the organisation of working time in line with the NAP's provisions, the series of planned tripartite meetings was suspended on 4 May 2000.

At the suggestion of the trade union side, a working party chaired by the Minister of Labour has been specially established to clear up outstanding points of contention. In addition to the Minister, this body consists of four employers' representatives and the general secretaries of the two main trade unions, each of whom may be accompanied by an expert. Members of the working group met on 5 May 2000, and they were expected to publish their definitive conclusions by 15 June 2000.

Only when these differences have been eliminated will the social partners be in a position to approve a new NAP incorporating the new guidelines drawn up by the Lisbon European Council meeting on 23-24 March 2000 (EU0004241F).

Assessment sent to Commission

On 6 May 2000, the Prime Minister announced that the European Commission was aware that a 2000 NAP drawn up with input from a tripartite body could not be produced in the time available. It was therefore agreed that the Luxembourg government would instead send the Commission an assessment of the current NAP setting out the results that have been achieved, accompanied by a commentary. This commentary will describe developments since the NAP was passed in 1999 and the difficulties experienced in implementing it, and will also assess its likelihood of success in the future.

In this context, and leaving to one side the problems of implementation referred to above, the Prime Minister stressed that the Tripartite Coordination Committee had observed that the existing NAP had brought about a considerable improvement in the guidelines aimed at improving the situation in the labour market.

Commentary

Since the publication of the law of 12 February 2000, the social partners have been at daggers drawn, condemning one another for not keeping to the spirit of the undertakings they took at a tripartite meeting on 18 April 1998 (LU9805157F). They seem to have forgotten that these undertakings were subsequently dissected in minute detail during a painful period of legal drafting that lasted 10 months and fundamentally revised the earlier commitments (LU9902194N).

It is to be hoped that the small working group will come up with valid solutions. If not, the industrial relations climate will take longer to improve. (Marc Feyereisen)