News

The UNI europa P&MS Steering Committee, at its meeting in Istanbul on 15-16 June, expressed ist support for the UNI HSBC/Santander campaign and the Turkish IBM employees struggeling for a collective agreement.

The meeting, chaired by UNI europa P&MS President Jean-Paul Bouchet from CFDT-Cadres in France, adopted a resolution in support of the UNI finance sector campaign, which aims at achieving global agreements with the finance multinationals HSBC and Santander. The P&MS Steering Committee encouraged all its P&MS members in the two multinational finance companies to actively engage in the campaign for a global agreement with their company.

The P&MS Steering Committee hopes that both HSBC and Santander management will soon agree to sign global agreements with UNI global union. For P&MS such agreements will make it easier to address genuine concerns of P&MS such as ethical and professional responsibility, lifelong learning and work-life balance policies.

The Steering Committee prepared for a Conference on ethical responsibility and protection of whistleblowers to take place on 24 September in Brussels.

Furthermore, the Steering Committee worked on the roll out of a new UNI P&MS passport program and the UNI internship service. Both will be available for UNI P&MS members shortly.

The P&MS Steering Committee also held a workshop with Turkish affiliates about organizing and recruiting professionals and managers into trade unions. Prof. Engin Unsal, labour legislation expert at Istanbul university, explained how difficult it was under the Turkish Labour Law to grow unions. He said that governmental interference in labour relations was widespread and violating the freedom of association. He also said that the density of unionization was very low in Turkey and that unions had to be much more innovative in order to attract white collar and professionals employees. He also said that the EU should push the Turkish Government to amend labour legislation in accordance with ILO standards as soon as possible.

Members of the Steering Committee form Denmark, Sweden, France and Portugal made presentations about how they approach, recruit and service their professional and managerial members. The Turkish UNI affiliates found the strategies presented inspiring and encouraging for their future organizing work.

Representatives of TEZ-KOOP-IS reported about a successful initiative organinsing professionals at IBM Turkey. The company, however, despite over 70% of professionals having joined the union, denied recognition and took the matter through all legal instances possible. In February 2010, after more than two year, the High Court enventually forced IBM to recognize the union and enter into negotiations for a collective agreement.

After a detailed brief about IBM Turkey behaving in the negotiations of a collective agreement, the P&MS Steering Committee adopted a resolution in which it expressed its dismay and condemned IBM’s tactics of protracting the bargaining process and its reluctance to negotiate in a constructive way.

The P&MS Steering Committee expressed its determination to give any support needed to the Turkish trade unionists in order to achieve an acceptable collective agreement.