Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Focus: Paul Mcginty EWC (European Works Council) representative, Madrid


http://www.unimanagement.eu/images/experience06.jpg



What is the EWC and what’s your part in it?



The 26 EWC representatives are a mix of teachers’ reps(5) and non-teaching staff(21), mostly projects, from almost every European country in the EC where the BC has offices. It is a statutory body, which means it can’t be ignored or bypassed, with statutory rights to be informed about the Council's plans for closures, redundancies and shifting resources. Mostly the recent bad news has affected non-teaching centres and smaller offices but the Brussels teaching centre was shut in June 2009.
We are very concerned by the scale of redundancies planned for the UK and for Finance and IT in Europe. We are also raising concerns with the CRB, performance mgt, and the lack of accountability and endemic poor levels of consultation. We are getting access to the Regional Directors who manage the Country Directors and making slow but steady progress in talking to the real decision-makers. The Steering Committee is due to meet with the Executive Board shortly and Martin Davidson will attend the 2nd of the two annual EWC meetings in Lisbon in November.
We have 2 reps for Spain and my colleague David Ireland is very busy on the steering committee. We are asking for more resources so we can travel to the various centres in Spain and report to staff in person.


What is the BC convenio?


By BC convenio I imagine you mean the acuerdo de empresa which we have agreed with MGT to begin discussions on. The process has been slowed by delay in finding a way all centres can agree decision-making. We reached some kind of agreement amongst the centres’ reps earlier this year but our union at national level has been dragging its feet a little. I hope to have some positive news shortly about starting the negotiations.

What will happen in this coming year on the BC convenio?



Hopefully negotiations will start, and we can deal with some of the more pressing concerns, which include pension provision improvement, abuse of temporary contracts, TACOS, and, of course, pay for 2010 onward.

For more info click on the links:

wikipedia

European Trade Union Confederation

European works council website