In a few hours, the unions ALEBA, LCGB and OGBL will sign an agreement with ABBL and Aca.

Last Tuesday, seven months after the start of negotiations, an agreement on the renewal of the collective labour agreements in the banking and insurance sectors was reached. The end of the negotiations will lead to an official signing later today.

"The signing will happen very soon", a person close to the matter recently informed our sister publication Paperjam. It is now almost a done deal. For the moment, the various players want to concentrate on the signing of this agreement before commenting on it. But Luxembourg union the OGBL has already underlined its satisfaction.

"The agreement in principle that was discussed in November gave us the minimum requirements for a signature. The minimums were completely reached and even exceeded. We have even obtained, without going into details, a bonus for those who work remotely, a linear increase of 0.7% this year and 0.3% next year, as well as an improvement in the number of days of leave, in addition to other improvements which will be detailed shortly," said Roberto Mendolia, president of ALEBA.

"We are very happy with this agreement, because we have managed to achieve a lot of improvements. All the more so because they all come from our list of demands, including a financial increase for all employees in the sector. This is a demand that we have never abandoned, unlike another union", commented Véronique Eischen, member of the OGBL executive board and head of the OGBL-SBA, clearly pointing to the trade union ALEBA.

"We welcome this agreement, which is in the interest of the employees. Moreover, it includes a large part of our demands. However, the negotiations got off to a very bad start with the announcement of an agreement between ALEBA and ABBL last November. Instead of having one list of demands, we ended up with two. It was not easy and we turned to the labour minister. And it was only after the withdrawal of sectoral representation that we were really able to start moving forward," said Paul de Araujo, LCGB trade union secretary.

Palpable tension

A small dig at the LCGB, the OGBL and ALEBA, which has had its sectoral representation withdrawn, shows that there is still tension between them. The latter had its sectoral representation withdrawn by the Minister of Labour, Dan Kersch (LSAP), against the background of a war of power and ego between the unions.

ALEBA had incurred the wrath of the other two unions by communicating, perhaps clumsily, an "agreement in principle" with ABBL and Aca in November, even before negotiations had begun. The LCGB and OGBL strongly criticised the method at the time, accusing ALEBA of "going it alone".

As for the details of the agreement, we will have to wait until the document is formalised with the signatures of each stakeholder to see it.