New Minister meets with workers and bosses.

On Friday morning, Government Minister for Social and Health Affairs Stephane Valeri gave a press conference to report on his first working meeting with the Union des Syndicats Monaco (USM). Having stepped into his new role in January 2010, Valeri spoke of looking beyond differences and advancing towards constructive agreements. He said that strikes and demonstrations are bad for workers, companies and the Principality as a whole. The difficulty lies in reconciling economic competitiveness with modernising the social responsibilities of companies.

In order to bring about this reconciliation, the Government is holding separate meetings with the USM and the Trade Federations (Federation Patronale), before organizing a joint meeting in Autumn to come up with proposals.

The first meeting with USM was a chance to take stock of the social situation, which Deputy General Secretary of the USM Betty Tambuscio described as critical. She reported that since the 1980s there has been no visible social responsibility for workers in Monaco. Believing a compromise to be possible, she asked Valeri to especially look into:

• introducing public salary scales and applying them
• ensuring the independence of workplace inspection services
• the issue of harassment at work
• clamping down on undeclared workers

It's going to be a challenging job for Valeri to find common ground between the interests of the USM and Federation Patronale.

Stephane Valeri - USM act 1