Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Some 500 ILO (International Labour Organization) employees in Geneva, more than half the total, blocked a meeting of their executive council Wednesday 10 November when they formed a human chain outside the meeting room where the group was scheduled to meet.
The staff of the UN organization are threatening to strike next week if their demands are not met. Two of the issues, the group says, are that the governing board does not respect recruitment practices and the ILO has too many short-term contracts, with little job security.
If the vote next Tuesday is in favour of a strike, it will be the first in the organization’s history.
Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Migros, Switzerland’s largest supermarket chain, has signed a new collective contract with its employees, covering 2011-2014. The company calls it one of the country’s best collective contracts, noting that it decided in March 2009 to invest an additional CHF5 billion in its Swiss business, taking the offensive – without specifically citing the arrival in Switzerland of large German cut-price chains. Migros became one of the leading companies based in German-speaking Switzerland to have a collective contract covering all its employees nationwide, in 1983. Such contracts are more common in French-speaking Switzerland.
Geneva and Zurich, Switzerland (RSR, Fre) – Hewlitt-Packard’s employees are not all happy at being told to stay home for the Christmas holidays, according to RSR, which reports that the company’s staff union is up in arms about the order.
