A dispute over wages, on-call pay, and holidays has pushed negotiations for Luxembourg's pharmacy employees into formal conciliation, a process that could end in strikes.

Negotiations for a new collective labour agreement for Luxembourg's roughly 1,000 pharmacy employees have reached a deadlock, raising the possibility of social conflict after the OGBL trade union described the situation as "unavoidable".

This week, the OGBL escalated the matter by involving the National Conciliation Office. The move follows an internal union survey in which 58% of employees participated. Of those, 94% voted in favour of entering into conciliation.

According to Tom Mamer, the OGBL's Deputy Central Secretary leading the negotiations, the union and the employers' side, the Pharmacists' Association, are far apart on three key issues. He emphasised that the existing collective agreement is nearly 20 years old, which has magnified these disputes.

The primary point of contention is salaries. A salary scale established in 2006, which was originally linked to the minimum wage, has remained frozen. While the minimum wage has increased over the past 20 years, the scale has not, leading to a situation where its entry-level values now fall below the legal minimum. In practice, new employees start at the minimum wage, but Mamer criticises that it can then take many years for their pay to progress above that level on the outdated scale.

To restore the intended 2006 wage levels, the OGBL states that an across-the-board increase of just over 8% is required. The employers have so far offered an increase of just under 2%.

A second major point of disagreement concerns the on-call system for nights, Sundays, and public holidays. According to Mamer, the current system fails to comply with the legal requirement that every hour an employee is available to their employer must be both paid and counted as working time. He stressed that the negotiations must resolve this discrepancy, stating, "For us, respecting the law is not a matter of expense."

The third sticking point is holiday entitlement. The OGBL is demanding that employees receive the standard 26 statutory days of leave plus an additional five days.

With the three key issues now formally tabled, the OGBL has announced it will begin mobilising its members after the All Saints' Day holiday. The conciliation process legally affords both sides 16 weeks to reach a new agreement. Should these talks fail, pharmacy employees, who work in a sector classified as critical and essential, would gain the right to strike.