Dear AMCHAM members, partners and friends,
This past week, we very much enjoyed a terrific seminar at Allen & Overy which provided excellent information on the forthcoming Social elections (March 2024) which take place every five years to elect the required staff representatives for companies with more than 15 employees. Included in this Newsletter you will find the slides of this presentation. Our most sincere thanks to Allen & Overy for the excellent presentation put on by their Employment Law team. We encourage our companies and their employees to pay attention to these slides. Since these elections only take place once every five years, people often forget the very exact rules for doing this. If you make a mistake and get this wrong, the consequence is that the election will be voided and you will have to do it all over again. So, please pay attention to these details to get things right.
Companies have basically two choices for dealing with trade unions and staff delegates. One approach is to treat the unions and staff delegates as the enemy and go to war against them. The other approach is to accept them as partners, and treat them with courtesy and respect while standing your ground fighting for the best company interests, but doing it in a cooperative professional way. We recommend this second approach is the best strategy for success and, going forward, we are prepared to help you achieve success with this second approach.
Our feature interview this week follows in this light by presenting the head of the LCGB union, Paul Dury. I have known Mr. Dury for quite a few years. While I do not agree with every policy position he and his union hold, I do respect him personally, for his intellectual strength and for his integrity/honesty. He is a quality person doing his very best to achieve the best interests of his constituency. I believe he plays fair and fully understands that companies need to be successful and make profits in order to have the capacity to take good care of their employees. In short, he is a worthy counter party. His interview with us will help you better understand his opinions and perspectives. Enjoy the interview.
We are pleased we have had positive responses to our recommendations to the new government which we published this past week. We are likewise pleased we have had no negative responses. If you have not seen these eight positive and two negative recommendations, please see them again HERE. As our responses to date have all been personal, we do not consider we have permission to publish these comments. Please do us the favor of sending us at info@amcham.lu your letter to the editor comments with your permission for us to publish. We are happy to publish your comments under your name, anonymously or with initials, as you wish.
With our annual Gala Thanksgiving sold out, we have established a reserve sign up list in the event of cancellations. Please contact Daniel@amcham.lu if you wish to modify your reservations or if you wish to be on the back up list should cancellations allow late sign ups.
For our last event of the year, we were thinking of having a Gala Christmas party on Saturday evening, 16 December at the Doubletree Hilton in Dommeldange. We will be very pleased for companies to join us for a last holiday celebration with their employees. We also hope all of our committee members will join us. Be assured this will be an event for both couples and singles with great food, drinks, networking with entertainment and dance music by Marco Boesen. Tables for 10 are member priced at 1.250 euro with individual tickets 125 euro for members and guests and 150 euro for non-members. If you all think this would be a good idea, please do let us know rather quickly so we can finalize the event.
Join us to close out the year together with a final good party! Please sign up HERE.
Thank you for allowing us to serve you!
With respect and very best wishes,
Paul Schonenberg
Chairman and CEO
AMCHAM.lu
