Amsterdam civil servants will also lay down work from Monday

Part of the municipal officials in Amsterdam will also temporarily stop working from Monday. Employees of the city cleaning and enforcement, among others, are participating in the strike, which will last a week. At the end of January they already laid down their work for a morning because they want a better collective labor agreement.

The announced strike in Amsterdam is part of a series of work stoppages in various municipalities to draw attention to the working conditions of local civil servants. For example, boas and garbage collectors in Utrecht, Rotterdam, The Hague, Groningen and Almere, among others, have already stopped working and today there is a national day of action in Utrecht.

Work will be stopped in Maastricht from next Wednesday, at least for the rest of the week. This means that the streets of the Limburg capital will still be cleaned during carnival, which starts next weekend.

Compensation for inflation

The activists are striking for a better collective labor agreement, which applies to about 187,000 municipal officials. They demand, among other things, a wage increase of 12 percent for this year to absorb the high inflation. They also want future inflation to be compensated automatically.

Negotiations between the unions and the municipalities on this subject stalled in December. The trade unions found the offer of the Association of Netherlands Municipalities (VNG) far too low. He had proposed a wage increase of 5 percent for this year and 3 percent next year.

On the action day in Utrecht, Ton Heerts, who is conducting the negotiations on behalf of the VNG, announced today that the municipalities want to sit down with the unions again. At the same time, he indicated what is not possible according to the unions: “I understand that 5 percent is too little, but 12 percent is too much.” The VNG is expected to come up with a new wage offer in a few weeks.