Collective labour agreement issues intensified by longer Sunday opening hours

Saturday 28 June at 11am marks the start of the long-awaited demonstration organised by Luxembourg's main trade unions OGBL and LCGB, with the aim of criticising the current government's policies. The turmoil started with collective labour agreement discussions, yet other topics quickly joined the list of issues. Our colleague Michèle Sinner at RTL.lu retraced the development of the conflict.

The unions had barely walked out of the Standing Committee of Labour, when the Labour Minister submitted a reform to increase Sunday working hours from four to eight. By doing so, he ignored the Chamber of Employees' opinion. At the same time, Economy Minister Lex Delles launched his reform to liberalise store opening hours. He suggested that shopping should be allowed from 5am to 10pm, including every Sunday.

Together, the two legislative texts would mean that employers would no longer have to negotiate improved conditions with the unions when they want employees to work more often and longer hours on Sundays – something that’s currently possible only through a collective agreement.

But as Tom Baumert from the Luxembourg Confederation explains, employers do not want that: "We find the collective agreement too complex when it comes to regulating opening hours. That’s our position."

Still, the suggested reforms do not go far enough for employer representatives. They are demanding a complete and radical liberalisation of shops' opening hours. They question the unions' representativeness – as seen in UEL president Michel Reckinger's statement:

“There are 30,000 businesses which do not have union members in their directory. What are we supposed to do with these 30,000 businesses, they all have specific questions, specific answers, which they can ask and share in their respective businesses. And we naturally want the employer to be able to discuss multiple things with their employees."

The wording is almost identical to the Labour Minister’s statement. It is clear where the CSV-DP coalition got their inspiration for their agreement from.

At the beginning of the year, near the end of January, OGBL and LCGB joined forces; although they had been rivals during the social elections last year, and they have not had the best relationship over the last few months. They announced the National Front, dedicated to joint actions, Nora Back explains. “If the government does not alter the files concerning the shop opening hours and working hours, they will only be added to the list including collective agreements and pension reforms.”

Social dialogue cannot consist of merely listening and then ignoring what has just been said, criticises Patrick Dury. “We are against the implementation of a Mufti decree, because it will eliminate the right to say something, to manage or to co-determine the whole situation.”

The realisation that a Mufti decree could also happen to ensure the announced pension reform is a palpable anxiety the unions harbour. The anxiety is increasing because, instead of talking to social partners and discussing issues in the usual tripartite manner, the social security minister Martine Deprez has used her consultation process entitled “Schwätz mat” to give a voice to employee representatives. The unions’ position thus loses weight; they are consoled with social roundtables, which PM Luc Frieden had already announced in January.

Until April no one had heard anything, which prompted the Green Party deputy Djuna Bernard to ask again. PM Luc Frieden responded that he had met with social partners, but that the positions of the different files would be too far removed from each other. “Those are all social dialogues which are necessary to our country. Where we can progress we do so in threes. In discussions where we have not progressed, we draw conclusions and suggest solutions as a government. Our solutions try to play fair to everyone involved.”

During his State of Nation speech at the latest, Luc Frieden would have had to agree with his haters. He was not sure yet whether the social roundtables had worked. “They were a success. The three parties found each other again, even though it was difficult at the beginning, they listened and respectfully exchanged ideas. The government wants to continue that respectful exchange throughout the upcoming months, and apply it to the social dialogue commission as well.

A few minutes later, PM Luc Frieden presented the rough outlines of the pension reform as a closed case. Therefore he confirmed the suspicion that the consultation processes had only been used for alibi purposes. Baby and student years, which the employers requested to get rid of, will be kept in the reformed pension system. “However, we will slowly increase contribution years. The career one needs to have accomplished to earn the right to a pension is going to be progressively extended by three months per year”, PM Frieden explained. “For those, who are at risk of old age poverty”, Frieden continues, “we will introduce a specific social help. For those who can save some money, we will render private pensions more attractive again, as a third pillar, to encourage people to set aside funds for their future self in retirement.”

Private additional pensions, although a source of income for the financial sector, do not offer a lot to people. Nevertheless, the Minister of Social Security Martine Deprez already played with the possibility in an interview she gave over a year ago, in addition to going to work longer. Even the Democratic Party deputies, the CSV’s coalition partner, did not know about that announcement, Gilles Baum revealed in a “Kloertext” episode.

“The Prime Minister announced in his State of Nation address that, starting in 2030, adaptations will occur every three months, a piece of information we were not given”, Gilles Baum explains. “We did not discuss it in the parliamentary party and I would have been happy to get a call from the Prime Minister every once in a while. It is an extremely important decision, where they always said ‘give us something to look at’”.

In the meantime, Vice PM Xavier Bettel has admitted that he had known all along, which did not reassure the trade unions.