Luxembourg staff has voted for a new Local Staff Committee (LSC) and the results of the elections have been published. Three lists were competing for the favour of voters: Generation 2004, Union Syndicale Luxembourg (USL) and a composite list made up by 6 entities, one of which (RS) is already a grouping of trade unions and staff associations (OSPs) naming themselves “Ensemble Luxembourg” (EL).

The results: Generation 2004 obtained 25.9% (up from 18.8% in 2016), USL obtained 34.1% (up from 25.6% in 2016) and EL obtained 40.0% (down from 55.6% obtained by the composing organisations in 2016). These results translated into 2 list seats for Generation 2004, 1 preferential and 3 list seats for USL and 11 preferential and 3 list seats for EL.

And the winner is…? You could say the winner is the composite list: Ensemble Luxembourg. Certainly, the list obtained 40% of votes and has now a majority position in the LSC holding 14 out of the 20 seats. They will be able to decide who will be the President and the Vice-Presidents of the LSC. They will also send 5 out of the 7 members of the Central Staff Committee sent from Luxembourg. Yet still, the composing organisations lost representativeness and will probably have to work with less resource than they had at their disposal beforehand.

At the same time, USL obtained a lot more votes than in 2016 (up 8 percentage points), still they lost their pleasant majority position in the LSC and lost 10 seats compared to beforehand. They will also be able to occupy one seat in the Central Staff Committee instead of 5 as before. Had they not withstood with all their strength a change of the electoral system to a proportional one, they could have ended up with 7 seats in the LSC (and 2 in the Central Staff Committee) instead. Is this bad luck? Is this stupidity? Who can tell…?

But coming back to the question, who is the real winner: If you add up the representativeness of the members of Alliance[*] in Luxembourg, the result will be as much as 56%, collecting votes from colleagues who want a correction coefficient, as well as from those who do not. (See also our earlier article on this subject) What will then be the stance of the Alliance in the social dialogue about a solution for the high living costs in Luxembourg?

And now back to Generation 2004: We gained 7 percentage points as regards representativeness, which translates to the same situation in terms of seats as we have been getting since we first participated in LSC elections in Luxembourg.

We thank all our voters for their trust in us and we will do whatever is in our power to support the LSC Luxembourg in its work for staff during the upcoming mandate.

Check our our proposal for reform here and here.

[*] Alliance (‘Confederal Alliance of Free Trade Unions’) contains 6 OSPs

1. Renouveau & Démocratie (R&D)
2. Conférence des syndicats européens et syndicat des fonctionnaires européens (Conf. SFE)
3. Union syndicale Luxembourg (USL)
4. Solidarité européenne (SE)
5. Save Europe
6. Association des fonctionnaires indépendants pour la défense de la fonction publique européenne (TAO-AFI)

We reproduce the grouping as listed in Human Resources in 2020 (p.91), taken across all 8 local staff committees.