§ Lord Pearson of Rannochasked Her Majesty's Government:
What were the numbers of working days lost as a result of industrial action in 1997 and 1998 on a comparable basis in Germany, France, Italy and the United Kingdom. [HL4058]
§ Lord McIntosh of HaringeyThe information requested falls within the responsibility of the Director of the Office for National Statistics who has been asked to reply.
Letter to Lord Pearson of Rannoch from the Director of the Office for National Statistics, Dr. T Holt, dated 16 September 1999.
As Director of the Office for National Statistics (ONS), I have been asked to reply to your recent parliamentary question on working days lost as a result of industrial action.
Directly comparable data are not available for statistics on industrial action. Different countries use different thresholds for including strikes in their national statistics and, for example, France and Germany exclude strikes in public administration. Further details on the exact definitions are given in an article in the April 1999 edition of Labour Market Trends, a copy of which is available in the House of Lords Library. I have enclosed a copy of the article.
International data for industrial disputes are collated and published by the International Labour Office (ILO). The following table presents the latest available data for each country. The statistics are given as the number of working days lost due to labour disputes per thousand employees. This gives a more meaningful comparison, as it takes into account the size of the employee population in each country.
Working days not worked per 1,000 employee jobs, as a result of industrial action Country 1995 1996 1997 1998 Germany1 8 3 2 1 France1 299 57 23 — Italy1 64 135 83 40 United Kingdom2 19 57 10 12 Source:
1International Labour Office,
2 Office for National Statistics.
—Not available.