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...
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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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SLT - Sindicatul Lucratorilor din Transporturi spends a week-end on roads and parking areas in Sweden with the Swedish Transport Workers Trade Union.
We hope they will meet no drivers spending their week-end in the truck, because that is illegal. If they do however, they will take up this practice with the enforcement authorities! 💪💪💪
Svenska Transportarbetareförbundet Hamnarbetarnas Fackförening
Will the UK government suspend the EU driving and rest time rules to deal with the Brexit border chaos?
Unite the union and their lorry drivers gathered yesterday in front of the Department for transport to say "NO" to it!!! 💪😠🚚
UNITE the UNION, our ETF affiliate from the UK, ran a survey among 4,000 lorry drivers. More than half were working over 50 hours per week . 85% slept six hours per night on a regular basis and over 75% drivers admitted that their working patters had a negative impact on their social and family life . See more below...
Warning: Exhausted lorry drivers
Over 4,000 lorry drivers completed Unite's survey on excessive hours. The survey revealed that long hours are resulting in lorry drivers becoming exhausted, ...Solidarity with Unite the union and all London bus drivers who fight for #FairTransport & better working and living conditions.
We join the call to tell Transport for London and the capital’s bus operators to put #SafetyFirst! ✊
#RespectDrivers #FatigueKills
TfL must tackle bus driver exhaustion demands Unite following shock report
Unite, the UK and Ireland’s largest union, is urging Transport for London (TfL) to take definitive action to tackle fatigue among London bus drivers.👉 Are you a young transport worker and a union member from Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Poland or Turkey?
👉 Do you want to learn how to campaign and fight for your rights in your workplace?
👉 Do you want to meet fellow activists from different countries?
Then we are waiting for YOU in Gdynia on 14-17 October!
If you are interested, contact your union rep for more details, or send us a message. The participants will be reimbursed thanks to the European Commission's financial support 🙂
We join our affiliate Unite the union in opposing any plan by the UK government to relax or remove the limits of the drivers hours rules set by Regulation 561/2006, as a result of Brexit.
#RespectDrivers #SafetyFirst
Story repeats! Governments f*** up and then force people to pick up the bill! Will Boris pay the drivers for overtime????
ROMANIA / truck drivers fight to resist the heatwave!!!
See picture below? A transport company writes to its drivers: "Truck drivers will be charged for the excessive use of airco. We understand it's hot, but do try to find a suitable place to park your lorry, and cut down on airco use."
This message was intercepted by SLT - Sindicatul Lucratorilor din Transporturi this week, in one of their parking area visits.
Nina Frandes, union president said: "Our drivers' rest conditions are ten times worse now, as the heatwave sets over Romania. Drivers are being instructed to cut down on airco! Take a moment and imagine how it is to live and rest, day by day, for 24 hours, in a scolding hot 4 square-meter cabin! We can only hope the #MobilityPackage gets adopted soon and with it, the ban on weekly rest in the cabin. That's going to ensure decent rest conditions for our drivers at least at week-ends! Not enough, but at least a step ahead."
Some drivers met during the parking area visits commented, referring to their employers: "Who's gonna work for them, if they go on like this!"
True! Who?
In solidarity! 💪🇮🇹💪 Today Italian unions unleash massive strike action to demand a fair and functioning transport sector.
We stand with our affiliates as they bring Italy to a standstill. The government is undermining the sector, while refusing to enter into meaningful dialogue with unions. Investment and clear rules are needed to deliver quality transport for Italians and decent conditions for transport workers. #FairTransport #ScioperoTrasporti
READ ➡️ bit.ly/2YugCGF
Filt Cgil Nazionale Fit Cisl Uiltrasporti Nazionale
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!
european transport worker's federation © 2017
galerie agora, rue du marché aux herbes 105 - 1000 brussels
+32 2 285 46 60 | road@etf-europe.org