Since the government changed sectoral bargaining laws in 2011, workers’ ability to have industry-wide representation was restricted. Unions have to represent more than 7 % of the sector’s workforce to agree to sectoral representation. As a result, pay and working conditions deteriorated. Moreover, the changing banking environment characterised by massive investments in IT infrastructure and cutting offline units and jobs forces trade unions to save jobs and obtain benefits for employees who lose their jobs. Banks already cut around 15,000 jobs during the last decade. The current collective agreement which expires at the end of this year, says employees who lose their jobs are eligible for compensation benefits up to 12 monthly salaries. But in recent years, the unions detected a tendency to reduce benefits for workers who lose their jobs, due to limited job creation. The Federation of Trade Unions in Insurance and Banking (FSAB) is preparing for a historic fight to regain the sectoral bargaining rights. A sectoral agreement would cover all the 100,000 workers employed by the finance companies and raise standards in the industry.
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For more information, please contact the editor Jan Cremers or Sanne van der Gaag, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies (AIAS) cbn-aias@uva.nl or the Head of communications at the ETUI, Willy De Backer wdebacker@etui.org. For previous issues of the Collective bargaining newsletter please visit http://www.etui.org/E-Newsletters/Collective-bargaining-newsletter or consult the archive with all articles in our database at www.cbnarchive.eu. You may find further information on the ETUI at www.etui.org, and on the AIAS at www.uva-aias.net.
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