Strasbourg, 29 May: 500 drivers & union activists called for the European Parliament to reject more flexibility of driving and rest time
At the express call of trade unions from Western European Member States, the ETF organised a demonstration in Strasbourg, in front of the European Parliament, on 29 May. 500 drivers and union activists urged the European Parliament to reject any change in the core...
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Ready to go! ETF Strasbourg demonstration, 29 May!
Hundreds of professional drivers and union activists are on their way to Strasbourg, France, to make their voice heard on the EU Mobility Package. More than 3 000 000 EU citizens work in bus, coach and lorry transport, and the EU has launched a reform of their wage...
read more
ETF never stops! Bus & coach actions today in Sweden, Italy and Austria!
Yesterday, the ETF Road Section scored a big success on the first Mobility Package vote in the European Parliament. The EMPL Committee adopted with large majority reports on posting, driving and rest time and cabotage that go pretty much in line with the ETF position:...
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Strasbourg, 29 May: 500 drivers & union activists called for the European Parliament to reject more flexibility of driving and rest time
At the express call of trade unions from Western European Member States, the ETF organised a demonstration in Strasbourg, in front of the European Parliament, on 29 May. 500 drivers and union activists urged the European Parliament to reject any change in the core...
read more
Ready to go! ETF Strasbourg demonstration, 29 May!
Hundreds of professional drivers and union activists are on their way to Strasbourg, France, to make their voice heard on the EU Mobility Package. More than 3 000 000 EU citizens work in bus, coach and lorry transport, and the EU has launched a reform of their wage...
read more
Strasbourg, 29 May: 500 drivers & union activists called for the European Parliament to reject more flexibility of driving and rest time
At the express call of trade unions from Western European Member States, the ETF organised a demonstration in Strasbourg, in front of the European Parliament, on 29 May. 500 drivers and union activists urged the European Parliament to reject any change in the core...
read more
Ready to go! ETF Strasbourg demonstration, 29 May!
Hundreds of professional drivers and union activists are on their way to Strasbourg, France, to make their voice heard on the EU Mobility Package. More than 3 000 000 EU citizens work in bus, coach and lorry transport, and the EU has launched a reform of their wage...
read more
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Will the new European Parliament President deliver for transport workers? - ETF: European Transport Workers' Federation
❗️JUSTICE! We welcome the release of Captain Carola Rackete.🚀
➡️ READ MORE ➡️ bit.ly/2XGS4K1
🇮🇹 An Italian judge has released the captain of the Sea Watch 3, who was arrested for breaking an Italian naval blockade after saving the lives of 40 migrants in the Mediterranean. Saving a life is NOT a crime.
👉 Her release is a victory for justice, but this humanitarian crisis cannot be tackled by NGOs or merchant ships alone. The EU and its Member States must work together to save lives and share the burden of dealing with this crisis.
💪🇫🇷 🚚🚚NO' to sleeping in vans of less than 3,5t, rules the French government!
The French government adopted last week rules to forbid drivers to sleep in their vans. You would wonder: are there any of them doing so? YES 😠😠 !!! We could see quite a few while visiting parking areas in Austria, Germany, even Poland! These photos are taken in a parking area near Vienna, on a freezing day of November!
Not bad to have a law against this, but we thought sleeping in such conditions it's rather against the European Charter of Human Rights. But as long as the French law comes with sanctions against employers forcing their overworked van drivers to sleep in parking lots, across the front seats, why not a national law too! 👊💪💪
Great two-day meeting in Stockholm with reps of the Swedish Transport Workers' Union. They have just concluded a collective agreement with an agency based outside Sweden, but providing drivers to Swedish companies.
A two-day meeting to talk "Union power! Organising was on top of our agenda. We decided to work on the application of posting rules to non-EU drivers and to agency drivers. Pretty much what our road trade unions from the Baltic states asked us to help with. Things are coming together!
We also discussed law enforcement! Yesterday we were joined by #MobilityPackage experts from the Swedish ministry of transport. Our message: rules must be properly checked and infringements properly sanctioned!!!
All in all, great meeting! Thank you Tommy, Jimmy and Magnus!
Meeting bus and coach 🚐🇸🇪🇸🇪🇸🇪drivers today in Sweden, Nobina depot in Norrtalje, with our affiliated trade union Kommunal - förbundskontoret. Their biggest concern: split shifts! In other words, hours of waiting in the depot between two or three bus journeys. With this kind of schedules, drivers end up being away from home more than 15 hours per day. Bad for their family life! That's why in the past 3 years the average age in the sector went up from 49 to 51 years: the profession is simply less and less attractive for youngsters. 😒
We talked too about the European Commission's plans to make driving, rest and working time rules more flexible under the Mobility Package, and about the joint ETF and Kommunal success in fending these plans off. "I love politicians who make laws without knowing what they are talking about", said one of the drivers. 💪💪💪
Thank you Kommunal and fellow drivers for the today's meaningful discussions! We'll continue our work on driver fatigue and bring the drivers' message to the public and to the EU Brussels institutions.
Sad day for road safety in Europe! New figures on road death in rban areas are worrying and require swift response from policy makers! That is why the ETF stands for tight driving and rest time schedules, and better enforcement of EU relevant rules! We join our partner organisations the European Transport Safety Council and FEVR in asking for more and better for the EU citizens and drivers alike!
70% of road deaths in European cities are pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists | ETSC
Tackling urban road safety must be a key priority for the European Union and European countries over the next decade, according to the European Transport Safety Council, authors of a new report.2019 figures on minimum wages in all EU countries are now out! EUROFUND published its annual review on the topic. Although in many Member States minimum wages went up, the gap is still there. A worker working in Luxembourg will gain 7.2 times more than one working in Bulgaria. In 2018, the wage gap between the two countries was of 7.7. But as prices continue to grow, wage growth is set off by price increase. In Latvia, the report says, where wages only go up every three years, workers' buying power went down by 2.9% in 2019! Then, the higher the wage, the lower the increase! In other words, while minimum wages went up by over 10% in Greece and Bulgaria, and by even 20% in Spain, the real wage increase in Belgium was of only 0.16%!
Read the EUROFUND report for more!
Minimum wages in 2019 - Annual review
In most EU Member States, reviews of the statutory minimum wage rates spark a great deal of public interest. Such reviews affect the wider workforce, beyond those workers on the statutory minimum wage...Today the ETF Road Section President attends the CFDT regional congress of Flanders & Cote d'Opale to explain the #MobilityPackage. 100 trade union activists and 200 questions!!! One thing is clear: the ETF scored a real success in keeping rules right, clear and controllable in road transport! We also met former MEP Christine Revault d'Allonnes Bonnefoy, one of our best supporters who watched over the transport workers' rights for the past 5 years! Thank you Christine!
In solidarity with our @Teamsters colleagues! ✊
#ConfrontXPO #WeareXPOIt's time to #ConfrontXPO. European solidarity to the Teamsters in their battle for decent conditions and stable contracts at logistics giant!
ETF Road Transport Section
International Transport Workers' Federation
We are in Riga today together with our road transport union colleagues from the three Baltic states to talk about organising Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian truck drivers. We also exchanged views about the Mobility Package. How will it influence our sector? What is in for our union members? We have a plan! An information campaign on the topic, setting up an info point for non-EU nationals taking jobs in road transport in the EU, and broadening union cooperation in central Europe to better protect the rights of truckers! Passenger transport was also on the agenda. Governments seem to forget that in Europe we pay for the entire working time, and not only forbthe driving hours! We need to get this right. And ETF will fully back its unions from the region to fend off all attacks to pay, benefits and working conditions!
ETUC Congress, Vienna / Roberto Parrillo President of the ETF Road Transport Section addresses the Congress delegates and calls for trade union cooperation across Europe, to better defend our workers' rights!
He also calls for the setting up of a European Road Transport Agency, to improve controls and law enforcement across EU borders. All other transport modes have one, while in road, in the absence of such agency, there is more and more abuse against bus, coach and truck drivers!
Stronger Together to end gender-based violence in transport! 💪
#FairTransport #EndGBV📢♀️💪 We’re taking the next step in our campaign Stronger Together against gender-based violence in transport!
✋NO to all forms of violence
👍YES to gender equality & ♀️participation in transport
Join us to make a difference! How? ▶️ bit.ly/2Qmw29o
#StopGBVatWork #ThisIsOurWorldToo #FairTransport
Thumb up for our dockers' trade unions from Italy. They are on strike today and the Italian ports are shut down!
💪💪💪🇮🇹
ETUC Congress, Vienna / Right now, Livia Spera ETF Acting General Secretary calls the European trade union movement to action! Transport workers shall not be Europe's second class workers!
EUROPEAN ELECTIONS 2019! Spread this message to all candidates to the European Parliament!
From the newly elected politicians,
WE ASK FOR EQUAL TREATMENT, AND BETTER JOBS AND LIVES FOR OUR BUS, COACH & TRUCK DRIVERS!
🚛🚌 “To safeguard drivers’ safety and working conditions, we need the rules to be enforced. A decade of austerity has led to a drastic drop in enforcement capacities all over Europe. This is a setback, but it also makes this the right moment to boost smart enforcement through advanced technological solutions. At the moment, drivers still travel around Europe with piles of paper in case they are stopped by one of the rare roadside inspections. Surely this approach is outdated and should be left in the previous century? We need to move towards digitalisation in law enforcement, to make work simpler, fairer and safer for drivers, companies and road inspectors alike.”
With European elections in two days, ETF and
International Road Transport Union - IRU - the EU social partners for road transport - call on the European Commission and Parliament to put enforcement at the top of the EU transport agenda for the next legislative term.
READ ➡️ wp.me/paiG0l-1ue
🙋♀️🏳️🌈🙋♂️ On the International Day against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia (#IDAHOT #IDAHOBIT), ETF stands proudly alongside #LGBT* workers across Europe and around the world. Work is a place where we have to feel safe and comfortable to be ourselves, but too many workers still face discrimination and harassment because of their sexuality or gender identity. LGBT* rights are workers’ rights, and that makes this a trade union issue.
💃🕺 Many of our affiliates are already working hard to fight discrimination at work. We held an event dedicated to the issues facing LGBT* transport workers at our previous Congress, and we highlighted it as a priority at our recent conference Moving Europe Forward. Now we are determined to step up and take action on equality issues. We will do this together with our affiliates, who are asking for us to be more active on LGBT* rights in the workplace, and the International Transport Workers' Federation.
🚀 "Now it is time to take the next step and achieve our full potential – the transport workers of Europe are counting on us!" --- Our new Acting General Secretary, Livia Spera, is ready to lead the ETF to even greater heights!
Her vision❓
1️⃣ Work with our affiliate unions to build power in an autonomous ETF.
2️⃣ Reinforce our sections.
3️⃣ Lead the debate on the issues that affect us all: automation, climate change and the struggle for a more social Europe
Let's get started❗️
READ ➡️ bit.ly/2H7PXVc
UBER, STOP TREATING YOUR WORKERS LIKE S***!
Meeting today in London at the ITF House, the ETF Executive Committee heard testimonies of two British UBER drivers. Working for UBER is exposing oneself to abuse, to unfounded allegations of fraud, to a highly insecure work environment! Drivers better put up with their clients' insulting behaviour or leave! Yes, "take it or leave it" applies all the way through in UBER. Even when drivers ask for a collective agreement! But ITF and ETF will not let go of it. We are ready to act and target the company directly!
Social partners in road transport stand together to demand EU action on safe and comfortable truck parking areas - ETF: European Transport Workers' Federation
WHAT'S NEXT ON THE AGENDA OF OUR SECTION? Summer's coming, and the #MobilityPackage is put to rest till later this year, when the new European Commission is in place. But the ETF Road Transport Section won't be clocking off. Be with us in our new journey!
On 16 May, at our Section freight working group meeting we'll be launching our work on secure parking areas, parcel delivery and Uber Freight!
In June, we'll start a country visit programme to exchange experience with our Section members and discuss common goals and priorities. Sweden is first on our list, with many more countries to follow.
Over the next few months we'll be working with our ITF Inland Transport -Road, Rail and Urban Transport- on social dumping in road freight transport by tackling multinationals and their subcontracting practices, a source of poor working conditions for our truck drivers in Europe.
And in December we'll hopefully start a project aimed at building a scientific case around driver fatigue. We'll be developing a simple tool-kit to enable our union members raise awareness on fatigue as key element of drivers' health and of road safety!
Start your week-end with another interesting letter-box company story!
SPOT THE KRAFT VEHICLE IN THE VIDEO BELOW!
Kraft Logistics Sighisoara has more than 100 vehicles registered in Romania, and recruit more than 300 Romanian drivers who work only abroad.
Kraft Logistics Sighisoara says it meets the requirements of the Romanian law and has parking lots proportional with the size of their fleet.
3F, ETF and Romanian trade union SLT - Sindicatul Lucratorilor din Transporturi visited the parking area where the company keeps its vehicles. We only found ... one trailer. Rest of vehicles are busy abroad, driven by Romanian truckers who are treated like hell. They sleep in lorries for 6 weeks at a time, are employed on Romanian wages while never working in Romania and when into severeal months of work, they are asked to sign a document, in German: a pay raise apparently, which turns to be their... dismissal paper!
We are at it now! 3F, the ETF and SLT will work together with our union contacts across Europe to curve these abuses! Flemming Smidt @Hans Christian Graversen European Transport Workers' Federation
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