Non-standard employment

In May 2001, Italy's Cisl and Uil trade union confederations (together with the independent unions, Ugl and Cisal) and 12 employers' associations, including Confindustria, each submitted to the government a "joint statement" they had reached on the transposition of the 1999 EU Directive on fixed

A new national collective agreement for Italian journalists, signed in April 2001, introduces new rules on fixed-term employment and freelance journalists, and for the first time covers online journalism. Negotiations on the deal were marked by conflict between the Fieg employers' association and

On 25 January 1999 Sven-Christer Nilsson, the chief executive of the Swedish-owned Ericsson electronics group announced that Ericsson Telecom was to stop production at its system production centre at Norrköping in south-east Sweden. On 4 February, all 587 employees at the factory - 190 white-collar

Aside from the general principle of equal treatment in working life (Gleichbehandlungsgrundsatz) which has been developed by case law in Austria, a special obligation to apply the principle of equal treatment for men and women at work (Gleichbehandlungsgebot) is explicitly laid down in the 1979 Act

Pension provision has become an increasingly controversial issue in the UK over the past 20 years. First, the relative value of the basic UK state pension has consistently fallen since the Conservative Party government ended the link between pensions and earnings in the 1980s. Second, leading

A series of intersectoral agreements on employment promotion signed by the Spanish social partners in April 1997 are due to expire in May 2001. The social partners started negotiations over a new version of these agreements in summer 2000 but, in view of their failure to reach a consensus, in March

In February 2000, an employment pact was signed for the city of Milan, Italy, with the aim of fostering the employment of people from socially disadvantaged groups. One year later, projects have been approved which involve the creation of around 1,000 jobs. The city council and the social partner

Italian trade unions are increasingly addressing the issue of representing their women members, and the three main confederations (Cgil, Cisl and Uil) have set up a variety of specific structures for this purpose. Here we review the various structures established within the unions and outline a