CoR staff face docked pay censure over strike action

Date: 14/11/02

By David Cronin

STRIKING staff at the EU's Committee of the Regions (CoR) will have pay deducted, the institution's top official has threatened.

On Tuesday (12 November) workers in the CoR's translation and planning services downed tools. They were protesting at last month's decision by the institution's administrative body, the bureau, to fill vacancies with an internal procedure rather than by open competition.

The previous evening, CoR Secretary-General Vicenzo Falcone wrote to all staff warning that those who stayed away from work would have their wages cut.

The Italian said that Union Syndicale, which called the strike, had not followed correct procedures. That was because Alan Hick, head of the union's Brussels branch, does not work for the CoR but for the EU's Economic and Social Committee.

According to Falcone, Hick should not have served a strike notice. Under an accord between the institution and Union Syndicale, the union's CoR representative Patrick Wanegue should be taking the lead, Falcone added. But Hick defended the action, saying it was supported by 'courageous comrades and colleagues' in the joint staffing service between the CoR and Economic and Social Committee. Falcone's message, he said, 'demonstrated a state of panic, typical of an authoritarian regime at its end'.Union Syndicale has some 200 members in the two institutions.

As well as striking this year, its members plan to block production and translation of texts needed for the next CoR session (20-21 November) and to stage a demonstration during it.

Striking staff at the EU's Committee of the Regions (CoR) will have pay deducted, the institution's top official has threatened.