The LCGB trade union has issued a statement concerning negotiations for a social plan for employees of the Group Saint-Paul publishing house.

Following the disagreement on 6 October 2020 within negotiations of a social plan for the Saint-Paul group, the social partners met on three occasions at the National Conciliation Office (ONC) and also had a number of intermediate meetings. They reported that the Group Saint Paul management is standing firm and has shown no willingness to negotiate "an extralegal component worthy of the commitment over many years" by the 74 employees concerned. The trade union has also claimed that the company has never expressed its intention to avoid all unemployment by negotiating an existential guarantee, which reflects the essential and overriding principle of Article 38, namely the employment guarantee. 

The LCGB has deplored that the employer is causing the negotiations to fail and consequently the non-conciliation for establishing a social plan on 27 October 2020, although a last-chance meeting has still been called by the conciliator for today, 28 October.

This non-reconciliation has the consequence that the employer can now proceed with individual dismissals in accordance with the legal framework. As such a dismissal will however represent a serious breach of article 38 of the collective agreement in force until 31 December 2021, each dismissed employee will be able to appeal to the labour courts. To this end, the LCGB has stated that it will continue its commitment to the dismissed employees through legal assistance necessary to assert their rights.

The trade union also stated that the conciliator had asked the social partners to negotiate the extra-legal aspect on the basis of the terms of the 2013 social plan. The LCGB reported that they made several proposals respecting the structure and content of the old social plan, taking into account the conditions for voluntary departures identical to those of the dismissed employee, the allowance linked to the family situation and the allocation criteria for the extra-legal allowance. The amounts related to this last allowance have been assessed and adapted according to Article 38 which deals with the guarantee of employment as defined in the collective agreement.

Throughout the negotiation period, the LCGB observed that the employer's position (refusal of voluntary departures, reduction in the amounts for the extra-legal indemnity) was inadmissible, because it was considerably lower than the conditions of 2013. The union also stated that the negotiations ended and noted that management is clearly not interested in the fate of its employees or in the Luxembourg social model, and claimed that the one and only desired goal seems to be cheap dismissal.