Lay officials of both the ABVV/FGTB and ACV/CSC unions have accepted the two-year basic agreement that their negotiators reached for blue-collar workers in the chemical industry; most recently the ACV/CSC building, industry and energy unionists did so, with a 77% ‘yes’. Nevertheless, the ACV/CSC union notes that was not easy to accept the limited increase in purchasing power, and confronts the 0.3% wage increase agreed on top of the price indexation with the large bonuses of the CEOs, also in the industry in question. The ABVV/FGTB union emphasises that the agreement also includes an increase of the minimum wage scales, the abolishment of the youth wages and the increase of the daily allowance of temporary unemployment with 5.5%.
Dutch: http://www.skynet.be/nieuws-sport/nieuws/belgie/detail_acv ...
http://www.nieuwsblad.be/article/detail.aspx?articleid=DMF20110406_086
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 at www.etui.org, and on the AIAS at www.uva-aias.net. © ETUI aisbl, Brussels 2011.