These main estimates also include $24.7 million to fund salary increases attributable to collective agreements signed prior to the 2010 federal budget.

10. Strongly criticises that in the framework of EU-IMF led ‘rescue packages’, the Commission issued diktats on making the pay out of funds conditional on cutting minimum wages, reducing wage ‘rigidities’, cutting pension entitlements, making labour markets more flexible and ‘aligning wages more closely with firm-level productivity, including through reform of arbitration and collective bargaining systems’; points out that these policies constitute a severe violation of the rights to social dialogue and collective bargaining; calls ...[+++]on the Commission and the Council to revoke such requirements for EU-IMF assistance;

9. Underlines that the Europe 2020 Integrated Guidelines demand a heavy handed approach from member states pushing for a decentralisation of collective bargaining, flexibilisation of employment, freezing and curbing public sector wages (guideline 2: ‘Adequate wage setting in the public sector should be regarded as an important signal to ensure wage moderation in the private sector in line with the need to improve competitiveness’); points out that the Treaty excludes issues of pay and collective bargaining from its scope and calls on the Council to delete such recommendations ...[+++] from the Europe 2020 Integrated Guidelines;

We all know what that means: mass redundancies, spiralling unemployment, drastic wage and pension cuts, new oppressive tax measures, the abolition of the eight-hour day, the division of working time into active and inactive time, an increase in unpaid working time and a 78-hour working week and the general application of flexicurity, which means minimal industrial relations, part-time temporary employment, revolving unemployment, an attack on collective agreement ...[+++]s and further privatisation of insurance and pensions systems, health, welfare and education, on the one hand, and subsidy and tax exemption packages for the monopolies, on the other.

5. Notes that no account was taken of the introduction, on 1 January 2004, of German legislation which nevertheless contained a transitional provision concerning the existing collective agreements allowing derogations from Directive 2003/88/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 4 November 2003 concerning certain aspects of the organisation of working time until 31 December 2005, a deadline subsequently extended to 31 December 2006 by a decision of the German Bundesrat; expresses its surprise at this state of affairs and emphasises that the Commission must examine the German legislation and all ...[+++]collective agreements containing exemptions to working time legislation in order to assess whether Directive 2003/88/EC is being implemented thereby;

Portuguese workers are fighting against rising unemployment, against increasingly unstable and flexible work and so-called flexicurity, against the devaluation of salaries and against the dramatic increase in inequality and poverty; and they are fighting for jobs with rights, for collective contracts, for salary increases and for fair distribution of wealth.