Aumayr-Pintar, Christine

Air transport has been in the news in recent months as strikes and difficulties in social dialogue across the European Union have strained relations between the sector’s unions and companies. Disputes in the different countries have revolved around pay and working conditions, restructuring and planned redundancies, collective agreement ‘cherry-picking’ and foot-dragging over entering into agreements.

Strike activity across the EU dropped in 2014 following a crisis-related peak in 2010. However, evidence from EurWORK correspondents suggests that the more highly unionised public sector has been a focus of industrial action recently. In general, strikes have been triggered by pay freezes and cuts, as well as by other unpopular effects of fiscal tightening such as lay-offs or changed working conditions.

Developments in Working Life in Europe is part of a series of annual reviews published by Eurofound and provides an overview of the latest developments in industrial relations and working conditions across the European Union and Norway

Since the beginning of 2015 a number of major collective agreements at national, sectoral and cross-sectoral level have been renewed, renegotiated, or under discussion. Several of the examples presented here are from the countries that have been hit hardest during the crisis and/or in which collective bargaining has been most affected, such as Croatia, Ireland, Slovenia, Spain or Greece. It is too early to speak about a reversal of the trend in collective bargaining in general; however, some tentative optimism may be justified.

This article presents some of the key developments and research findings on aspects of public sector pay and collective bargaining in the EU during the third quarter of 2015. Its main focus is a growing trend of restored pay levels in public sector agreements. It also deals with the broadening scope of such agreements and discusses evidence that some governments want to introduce more flexibility in pay-setting.

The Maternity Leave Directive (92/85/EEC) is concerned with improvements in the safety and health at work of women who are pregnant, have recently given birth or who are breastfeeding. This report finds that nearly all Member States comply with the directive’s provision of granting at least two weeks’ mandatory maternity leave before and/or after childbirth; a majority exceed this requirement.

This article presents some of the key developments and research findings on EU-level developments in collective employment relations during the final quarter of 2014. Social dialogue structure and process reforms are the main focus of this report.

This article presents some of the key developments and research findings on aspects of dispute resolution in the EU between the first and third quarters of 2014. Changes in the EU Member States’ collective and individual dispute resolution mechanisms are the main focus. The section on 'Extensions of rights of association and right to strike' for Ireland was updated in February 2018.

In the recent past, the policy debate around wage setting – both at European and the national level – has reflected the view that wages should better reflect differences in productivity developments. This article provides an overview of related debates in a number of Member States in 2014. By and large, there seems to be some ‘convergence at the level of debates’: with reflections about the possible introduction of universal minimum wages in some of those Member States with collectively agreed minima, while Member States that already have a statutorily set wage floor are considering different ways of introducing more differentiated minima. This would eventually move them closer to the prevailing system in the first set of Member States as regards the setting of wages at the lower end of the wage distribution.

Most EU Member States have a statutory minimum wage which sets the lowest legal amount of pay for all employees (some also have specific lower minimum levels for certain groups of workers, mainly younger ones). Germany joined this group of countries on 1 January 2015. This has triggered some debate in those countries which have minimum wage levels set within collective agreements. The implementation and enforcement of the German legal minimum wage will have impacts not only at national level but even, as already seen through the discussions raised in the road transport sector, at pan-European level, especially with regard to the posting of workers. This article presents the most recent data on statutory minimum wages, applicable on 1 January 2015 (see table), and an overview of the discussions leading to the final settlements made in 2014.