Unions and employers at the US Steel plant in Kosice, Slovakia, have reached an agreement after 182 days of preparations for an indefinite strike. The employer increased salaries by an average of 80 euros per month and agreed to pay a lump sum of 100 euros per employee. For work in extended specialty occupations, the wage supplement has been increased to 30 euros per month.
Possible extension of working hours by the employer by two hours per week is replaced by a model of four months upon notification, plus another two months in agreement with the trade unions. So far, this model has been 3 + 3, the employer wanted to change it to a 6 + 6 model.
US Steel spokesman Jan Bacha said that this year's collective bargaining has been extremely difficult. “We wanted to do more in the area of working time flexibility. We need to be able to schedule work shifts more flexibly. There are many uncertainties and unpredictability, such as energy and large price fluctuations. This also affects the households of our employees, so we are happy to reach an agreement,” he said in an interview with the Slovak publication TASR.
“This is such a serious compromise agreement, which, of course, was facilitated by the fact that we collected signatures for call for a strike. Based on this fact, there were very constructive negotiations and we reached an agreement at the table last week and it was ratified on Monday by all 12 grassroots organizations working in US Steel Košice in the OZ KOVO Trade Union Council,” union leader Juraj Varga told TASR .
