Germany - Union sets out bargaining guidelines in waste sector - April 16, 2010

The waste sector of the ver.di services union has agreed a set of collective bargaining guidelines to provide a framework for its negotiations in the industry. The union argues that in the past it has had to react to continuing pressure from the employers to cut jobs and keep wages low. Instead of reacting to events, the union wants to develop a more strategic approach to its collective bargaining work in a sector characterised by intense wage competition a trend for employers to pull out of the private sector industry agreement. The 11 guidelines include maintaining the industry agreement, securing collective agreements with employers who are not covered by that agreement, ensuring that recruitment of members is a key element of any disputes with employers, and getting increases to the new sectoral minimum wage.

English: http://www.epsu.org/cob/363;

German: https://ver-und-entsorgung.verdi.de/abfallwirtschaft/tarifarbeit_tarifpolitik/tarifpolitische-grundsaetze

This article was published in the Collective Bargaining Newsletter. It aims to facilitate information exchange between trade unions and to support the work of ETUC's collective bargaining committee. For more information, please contact the editor Maarten van Klaveren, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies (AIAS) M.vanKlaveren@uva.nl. You may find further information on the ETUI atwww.etui.org, and on the AIAS at www.uva-aias.net. © ETUI aisbl, Brussels 2009.