Luxembourg’s two largest trade unions have announced they are withdrawing from the tripartite negotiations in their current format and will no longer participate in a committee overseeing labour and employment matters, just a week after striking a deal with the government on some reforms to the pension system.
“We no longer believe in negotiations,” LCGB President Patrick Dury said on Thursday during a joint press conference with OGBL President Nora Back. “The government has declared the end of the social model as we have known it since the late 1970s,” the pair said in a letter to Prime Minister Luc Frieden, which was read out during the press conference.
The union leaders reiterated their frustration at the failure of three meetings between government ministers, employers’ representatives and unions to reach a long-term agreement on securing Luxembourg’s pensions system, despite a compromise being reached on some points.
“We are in favour of a tripartite model, but not the way the Frieden government conducted it,” explained Dury, describing the meetings held either side of the summer break as “chaotic”, with Back calling them a “farce”.
Unions walk out on Luxembourg’s labour minister over collective agreement reforms
The unions said that from now on they will only discuss issues bilaterally with the government and the relevant ministers, presenting their proposals and criticisms.
In their joint letter to Frieden, the union leaders accused the prime minister of policies which had “poisoned relations” and also said they would no longer take part in the Standing Committee on Labour and Employment (CPTE), which examines labour issues.
In what was seen as a victory for the unions in the recent talks, the CPTE has been tasked with oversight of negotiations between social partners in the area of collective agreements and other labour contracts, and with investigating how working time agreements can be improved under law.
Luxembourg no longer open to reform, warns business lobby
CPTE no longer has a mandate
In their letter to the prime minister, the unions stated that in their view, the CPTE no longer has a mandate to meet, and demanded that discussions on working hours be held one-on-one with the Minister of Labour.
According to Back and Dury, the only reason the government backed down on its proposals was due to the mass demonstration against reforms called by the unions in the capital at the end of June. The union presidents said that it remains possible that there will be more such demonstrations in the next three years, as long as the current government is still in office, although they did not offer any concrete details about future actions during Thursday’s press conference.
Back said the unions had managed to defend some red lines. “We are pleased that we were able to maintain the exclusivity of collective agreements,” she said, expressing relief that the government has dropped plans to allow collective agreements to be signed without direct union involvement and that it will not seek to change the fundamentals of the nation’s existing Labour Code.
But the overall results of the talks had left her unimpressed. “We have merely maintained the status quo. All this for what?,” Back asked.
Pensions talks leave unions and employers frustrated
There have been no improvements, the unions claimed, on any of the issues addressed in the most recent talks – either on collective agreements, working hours, Sunday work, or pensions.
On the contentious issue of Sunday work in the retail sector, the government has succeeded in driving through its agenda, increasing the maximum legal working day from four hours to eight – as long as it is agreed to in a collective agreement or interprofessional agreement for companies with over 30 full-time equivalent employees.
According to Statec data, Back said, this means that only seven percent of companies, or 125 businesses, will require a collective agreement. The remaining approximately 1,700 companies, according to the OGBL president, would fall under the draft law on Sunday work.
(This article was originally published by the Luxemburger Wort. Machine translated, with editing and adaptation by Lucrezia Reale.)
