Voters will have a final say in September on a step towards liberalisation - allowing shops at some petrol stations to do business around the clock. A broad alliance of trade unions, left-wing parties and church groups sees the initiative for this referendum, heavily sponsored by the centre-right Radical Party, but also backed up by centrist parties, as a further episode in the fight to protect labour rights, as the reform might open the floodgates for the whole retail sector. The fear is that, if petrol station shops are allowed to sell the full range of products 24 hours a day, seven days a week, it will soon become the rule in the retail trade.
English: http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/swiss_news/Unions_challenge_parliament ...
For more information, please contact the editor Jan Cremers, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies (AIAS) cbn-aias@uva.nl or the communications officer at the ETUI, Mariya Nikolova mnikolova@etui.org. For previous issues of the Collective bargaining newsletter please visit http://www.etui.org/E-Newsletters/Collective-bargaining-newsletter. You may find further information on the ETUI at www.etui.org, and on the AIAS at www.uva-aias.net.