Labour Law News

French oil sector workers of the CGT trade union will join a national strike at refineries and other installations from May 17 to May 20 against a planned government reform of French labour law, a CGT union official told Reuters on Friday. The union will also propose to shutdown production at refineries and other oil sector sites during a May 20 meeting, Thierry Defresne, CGT union official at Total, said after a general assembly meeting of the trade union. "What we have decided this morning is to launch a strike on all refineries in France from May 17 in the morning until midday on May 20," Defresne said, adding that the strike will affect Exxon Mobil and Esso facilities.

Dockworkers in the Portuguese ports of Lisbon, Setubal and Figueira da Foz will go on a 10-day strike starting Nov. 14 to protest at a potential end of collective bargaining agreements, the stevedores union said in a statement. The ports to be affected by the strike are the third, fourth and fifth biggest in Portugal, in terms of container shipments. The strike will not affect the country's largest port in Sines, nor the second-largest in Leixoes, near Porto, which together account for three quarters of all container shipments. A wider stevedores strike in 2012 against labour law changes disrupted Portugal's exports as the country struggled with an economic and debt crisis.

More workers in Norway's oil sector walked out of wage talks on Wednesday, sending the dispute to a state mediator and raising the prospect of a repeat of a 2012 strike. Workers who operate onshore supply bases broke off talks, joining platform oil workers and oil service employees in breaking off wage negotiations, the Norwegian Oil and Gas Association, the energy companies' interest group, and trade union Industri Energi said. "This was the third wage negotiation this year and the third one that is going to mediation," Jan Hodneland, the chief negotiator for oil firms said. The association said unions had made unreasonable pay demands for work on holidays and outside regular business hours.

Greek transport unions promised chaos for travelers during Thursday's 24-hour general strike, with public transport in Athens forecast to grind to a halt and Olympic Airways and Greek railways scaling back on routes. The 24-hour nationwide strike has been called by Greece's largest labor grouping GSEE, with the support of public sector sister group ADEDY, to protest against plans to reform the country's social security system. The government last week unveiled proposals to revamp the ailing social security system by raising the retirement age, changing how pensions are calculated and doing away with a number of special categories of pensions.