According to the negotiating result achieved on Monday, interns will receive a compensation of 150 euros per month. That is more than the current 100 euros, but less than the 400 euros for which the Medical Student recently pleaded with employers’ organization NVZ. Nevertheless, The Medical Student says he is satisfied.
Care unions and the Dutch Association of Hospitals reached agreement on Monday for the new Collective Labor Agreement for Hospitals. Chairman Pim van Dool says in a response: ‘Indeed, the CLA agreement provides that interns will now be reimbursed for expenses from 100 to 150 euros per month. As DG we are certainly happy with this, as far as we are concerned it is a step in the right direction.’
According to him, the increase shows that the action of the interns – a petition that has been signed at least 13,000 times – and negotiations by the unions have been successful. At the same time, he sees an additional 50 euros as an ‘invitation to continue to work for an internship allowance for interns that is equal to the other interns in hospitals’. He hopes that the new expense allowance, which does not take effect until July 1, is a prelude to structural improvements.
Empowering In the consultations between NVZ and unions, the position of residents was also discussed. The high workload among residents has been a concern for quite some time. They have a 38 +10 contract: he works up to a maximum of 48 hours per week, is paid for 38 hours and works approximately ten hours for his training.
‘The previous collective labor agreement states that residents can be scheduled for those extra ten hours – but in practice those hours were scheduled as standard,’ says LAD spokesperson Marjolein Dekker in an explanation. ‘We have laid down in the new collective labor agreement that the extra scheduling of the extra 10 hours is not allowed on a structural basis. Residents or their trainers can from now on, with the collective labor agreement in hand, make a point of it if they have been scheduled too many weeks in a row. This addition is intended to empower residents and raise awareness among managers.’
See here the negotiation result, which is not yet final. The outcome of the member consultation is expected in about a month.
