Teachers strike, but police sign collective agreement

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The threat of strikes proved sufficient to produce a new collective agreement for the Dutch police force on 16 January 1999. Teachers' trade unions, on the other hand, launched a series of rotating nationwide strikes on 18 January to underline their demands. Both sides in the teachers' conflict are now assessing the outcome of the police dispute as a possible model.

When a dispute over a new collective agreement for the Dutch police force (NL9901118F) escalated to the point of a strike threat in January 1999, this proved sufficient to produce an agreement. However, the dispute concerning teachers' pay (NL9812116N) remained unresolved, with a series of rotating nationwide strikes being launched on 18 January.

Negotiators from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and police trade unions set out the conditions for a two-year collective agreement, following an 18-hour marathon session on 16 January. The parties settled on a 3% pay rise for 1999, and a 2% increase in 2000. In addition, employees in the sector will receive an end-of-year bonus worth an extra 0.5%. The parties also agreed to adjust wages correspondingly should inflation exceed 1%.

Negotiations on the police early retirement scheme - the minister was pushing to raise the minimum age of retirement from 60 to 62 years - resulted in a compromise. The retirement age has now been set at 61 years with employees retaining 70% of their final salary. A generous transitional arrangement has also been agreed. Younger employees - trainee police officers - received a highly advantageous settlement in view of the currently tight labour market: their remuneration of NLG 900 a month has been increased to a gross salary of NLG 2,600. The unions, however, were forced to make a number of concessions in the area of flexibility: officers can now be transferred more easily and will be facing increasingly flexible deployment. One form of compensation for these measures may be the implementation of a new payroll system. Details of the new system have not been forthcoming, however, presumably in the hope of preventing similar demands from other unions in the government sector.

The Minister of Internal Affairs, Bram Peper, pulled off something of a coup by bringing the former chair of the FNV union confederation, Johan Stekelenburg- currently serving as mayor of a medium-sized city - to the negotiating table as part of the employers' delegation in the police negotiations. The result was a marathon negotiating session and an agreement. For the time being in the teachers' dispute, however, the Minister of Education, Loek Hermans, has not called in the aid of State Secretary Karin Adelmund, who also rose to her current position through the union ranks. On 18 January, rotating strikes of teachers started in the southern provinces and the Den Bosch police force "took over" teaching duties at local schools as part of a joint action. On the same day, both parties to the teachers' negotiations were poring over the new collective agreement for the police force. The unions had already announced that in their view Minister Hermans could still put negotiations back on track by using extra funds of NLG 215 million - set aside for the implementation of incentive pay - for a general pay rise. The minister's current position is that any such wage increase cannot exceed 2.8%. Teachers' unions are demanding 6.25%, calling a 5% rise - as awarded to the police force - inadequate in view of the education sector's salary backlog and the excessive workloads for school directors. Moreover, the cost of a 1% pay rise for 40,000 police officers constitutes nowhere near the amount involved in the same increase for 340,000 teachers. However, a calculation of the amount spent on the new police collective agreement by the Minister of Internal Affairs should certainly be seen as an absolute minimum for the Minister of Education.