(24/6/2009)

The French energy group Total has dismissed nearly 900 workers at Lindsey oil refinery in Lincolnshire after a wildcat strike last week. The workers claim that an agreement not to cut jobs was broken. Already in January, Lindsey was hit by mass industrial actions over an alleged undercutting of collective agreement by the use of foreign posted workers. EFBWW, the European Metalworkers Federation and the European Chemical Workers’ Federation have issued a Joint Statement in support for the...

(17/6/2009)

The European Federation of Building and Woodworkers (EFBWW) is coordinating a project funded by the European Commission. The main goal of the project is to provide potential and future migrant workers in the EU with precise, concise and easily-accessible information about the sector-specific working conditions in the main countries of destination (“know before you go”) as well as with trade union contact information. This is planned to be realised through a multi-language website (first...

(11/5/2009)

In an interview on the Swedish Radio on 9 May, the Vice-President of the European Commission, Margot Wallström, proposed Mrs. Anna Diamantopoulou as the socialist candidate to succeed Mr. José Manuel Barroso as President of the European Commission after the European Elections. Diamantopoulou is Member of the Greek Parliament and former EU Commissioner for Employment and Social Affairs. In addition to this, Mrs Wallström says she is in favour of revising the Posting of Workers Directive...

(9/4/2009)

The EFBWW has now published its European Parliament Election Manifesto, bringing forward important issues and demands to be prioritized by the next European Parliament. The Manifesto contains demands and proposals related to the economic crisis and to co-ordinated European investment projects and Climate Change policies; to the overturning of the recent judgments of the European Court of Justice, relating to workers’ rights and equal treatment; to the fight against de-regulation of health and...

(9/3/2009)

Major building companies in the UK have been buying allegedly illegal personal data of 3,213 workers. On the BBC, the UK Deputy Information Commissioner “David Smith” declared that “firms he described as "household names" had been involved in an allegedly illegal system for many years”. The private investigator (Ian Kerr) has been accused of clandestinely compiling an "extensive intelligence database" of workers with details that stretch back to the 1980s. This data contained personal...