There is a collective agreement between the trade unions and the Association of Netherlands Municipalities (VNG). Cleaning services in several cities had stopped working after negotiations on a new collective agreement failed. Those strikes have now been suspended. As of today, garbage collectors in Den Bosch and Maastricht would stop working.
Employees of municipalities receive a structural wage increase of 240 euros per month. In addition, there will be an increase of 2 percent. FNV negotiator Marieke Manschot: “At the bottom of the lowest scale, this means almost a 16 percent wage increase and then descending to the highest scales. All in all, an average wage increase of 9% for all employees.”
Civil servants will also receive an extra day off this year and from next year 5 May will be a fixed day off.
Indispensable
The new collective labor agreement will take effect retroactively and will run from January 2, 2023 to January 1, 2024. CNV negotiator Juan Schot: “The men and women of the municipal cleaning services and enforcement have shown and heard the Netherlands in recent weeks that they are indispensable for the Netherlands. but also that they can hardly make ends meet themselves. With this agreement we prevent them from being forced to seek refuge in another sector where wages have risen before.”
The agreement must still be approved by the members of the trade unions, after which it will take effect definitively.
There are also strikes in regional transport and at various hospitals. There is still no agreement on a new collective labor agreement.
Entrepreneurs in Maastricht collected the waste themselves this morning, because it was not yet certain whether the cleaning service would come today:
- Garbage collectors Rotterdam clean up the city after a strike of almost a week
- Amsterdam civil servants will also lay down work from Monday
- More strikes to come, waste mountain in Utrecht is getting bigger and bigger
