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Negotiations on an EWC agreement for Orpea broke down on 23 October 2020. The group operates around 1,000 facilities with over 80,000 beds in 14 EU countries and has expanded rapidly through acquisitions. In Germany, it ranks fourth in the industry. The European market leader is Korian, where an exemplary EWC agreement was signed in April 2019 (see report in EWC News 2/2019), the first ever in the care sector at the time.
After the application to establish an EWC in November 2017, the constituent meeting of the special negotiating body took place in April 2018 in Bischoffsheim (Alsace). Central management waited until shortly before the end of the three-year negotiation period to present its very first draft of an EWC agreement. In the midst of the Coronavirus pandemic, it then wanted to complete the negotiations during a face-to-face meeting on one single day and refused to hold a video conference. All delegates refused to participate. As a result, an EWC "by law" is now being established for Orpea which is based on the subsidiary requirements of the French Labour Code and will cover the 60,000 employees in the EU.
The management of this publicly listed group has repeatedly drawn attention to itself through anti-union behavior. In France, CGT employee representatives were spied on and in Belgium there were strikes over understaffing. The German subsidiary Celenus engaged in a dispute lasting for years with the ver.di trade union.
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4/2020
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