Eurofound 2014 report on collectively agreed wages: Central administration wage freezes and lack of social partner involvement in wage setting still widespread
2015-09-16 12:00
In its recently issued 2014 report on developments in collectively agreed pay in EU Member States, the EU agency Eurofound found that central administration employee wages are still frozen in many EU Member States and that in others social partners are not (yet) involved in wage setting. Overall, from a trade union perspective, the report highlights encouraging trends as well as worrying developments.
On the positive side, the report found (modest) wage increases in the central public administrations of 13 EU Member States in 2014. In many of these countries, a mature system of social partner wage setting or involvement in wage setting contributed to this development. This concerns, most notably, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Sweden.
Countries such as the UK, Latvia and Bulgaria also saw increases in wages in their central administrations – but by government decision and outside a social partner wage determination procedure.
Unfortunately, there is also a large number of countries where wages for central administration workers were not raised: Belgium, Croatia, Cyprus, France, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain are examples of countries belonging to this group. In several cases, wage freezes prohibited any wage increases, be it through social partner negotiations or government decision.
The full report by Eurofound can be accessed here.
