A dispute by aircraft maintenance technicians has been settled after an agreement. On 7 October these workers, represented by the Svenska Transportarbetareförbundet (ST) union, began a two-day strike and an indefinite overtime ban over the terms of their collective agreement. The overtime ban ended on 15 October after an agreement was reached with the Swedish federation of enterprises; as a result, a strike planned for 16 October was called off. The main sticking point was which technicians were covered by the collective agreement and the need to protect local agreements, which had been reached outside the auspices of the collective agreement. Jonny Fransson of ST commented: “We were worried that the employers could give notice to terminate the local agreements, leaving members with lower wages and poorer conditions. We have prevented this from happening with this new agreement”, adding: “We also got the Swedish aircraft engineers’ union involved in the agreement as a third party. This means that all the workers are now covered by the collective agreement.”
English: http://www.itfglobal.org/news-online/index.cfm/newsdetail/5279?frmSessionLanguage=ENG
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.