Publications

The framework agreement, signed on 15 November 1996, for the 625,000
employees in the 275 Danish municipalities and 14 counties, is the
culmination of six years of experiments with new structures for cooperation
between workers and employers. The agreement is a response to the increasing
demands imposed on local and regional authorities for quality services,
budgetary restraints and improvements in efficiency and increased flexibility
on the part of employees.

In autumn 1996, following what company management considered the constant
opposition of some works councils to worker participation, the
Electrolux-Zanussi group in Italy announced that it intended to terminate all
company-level agreements on participation from the end of March 1997. At the
same time, however, the company invited trade unions to negotiate a revision
of the participation model which had been developed within the group during
the previous years, in order to strengthen it and confirm joint and full
support from both unions and management. Consultations among company and
union representatives started in May, but they have not yet led to an
agreement. The issue at stake is very important, since the participation
model at Electrolux-Zanussi is generally considered one of the most advanced
in Europe and the most significant in Italy.

Protests in June 1997 against the termination of ship-refitting work at
Spain's publicly owned Astander shipyard met with a forceful response from
the police. The problem arose because the Ministry of Industry imposed a
unilateral amendment to the Strategic Competitiveness Plan for the naval
sector. The dispute is still continuing, even though the Ministry has
modified its position

On 17 June 1997 the Swedish Employers' Confederation, (SAF), gave notice of
termination of the "adjustment agreement" with PTK, a negotiating cartel of
27 salaried employees' unions. The agreement thus runs out on 31 December
1997.

In his inaugural policy statement to Parliament on 19 June, the new Prime
Minister, Lionel Jospin, announced a 4% rise in the SMIC national minimum
wage to take effect on 1 July 1997.

A new collective agreement, signed in May 1997, improves financial and social
conditions for bank employees in Greece

After 18 years in the wilderness, being frozen out of influence in the
corridors of government by Conservative administrations, trade unions have
been informed that they will be offered places on working groups being formed
to advise various government departments. The Trades Union Congress (TUC)
reports a substantially changed mood in Whitehall and Westminster, after
years of unions being systematically excluded from representing their
members.

According to a recent study of 1997 provisions by the Institute for Economics
and Social Science (Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaftliches Institut, WSI),
most employees in Germany receive a collectively agreed holiday bonus, though
there are significant sectoral differences in the amount of the bonus. While
most employees are due 30 days' paid leave per year, the average annual
holiday bonus for a blue collar worker in a middle-range income group ranges
between DEM 200 and DEM 2,587.

Since the original introduction of early retirement schemes some 20 years
ago, the number of employees aged 60-66 taking early retirement has more than
tripled, from about 40,000 in 1980 to 127,000 in February 1997, equal to more
than two-thirds of everyone in that age group. In 1976 more than 75% of all
men remained in the labour force until they were 65; today only 28% stay on
until they become entitled to a pension at 67. Over the course of the last 20
years the average age of those taking early retirement has fallen from 63 to
60. TheMinistry of Finance estimates that there will be 160,000 recipients of
early retirement benefits by 2005, whereas theDanish Employers' Confederation
(DA) estimates that this figure will double to some 260,000 people. The wide
difference of opinion between the government estimates and those of the DA
accounts for the disagreement as to whether legislation is needed to stem the
flow of those opting to take early retirement.

During the last few months the attention of Italian industrial relations
practitioners has been drawn by two new kinds of agreement - "gradual
alignment" agreements and so-called "discount agreements". They are quite
different, but both deal in a distinct way with the same problem: wage
flexibility. A deeper analysis of their origins and scope is important, as
the issue of wage flexibility is one of the most prominent in the debate on
the reform of Italian industrial relations, and is put forward with
increasing emphasis by employers' organisations, also with reference to the
forthcoming revision of the tripartite agreement of July 1993, which is due
to start at the end of June 1997.