Strikes broke out in the Dutch welfare sector throughout the first half of June 1998 in support of trade union demands in bargaining over a new collective agreement. As in other sectors, wage demands and workloads are the most important issues in negotiations. The employers' final offer - a 5.4% pay rise spread over two years - has been rejected.
Download article in original language : NL9806185NNL.DOC
Strikes broke out in the Dutch welfare sector throughout the first half of June 1998 in support of trade union demands in bargaining over a new collective agreement. As in other sectors, wage demands and workloads are the most important issues in negotiations. The employers' final offer - a 5.4% pay rise spread over two years - has been rejected.
At the beginning of June 1998, about half of the daycare centres in the Netherlands kept their doors closed, and in the middle of June a series of one-day "relay" strikes took place in the welfare sector throughout the country. Not only childcare, but employees at asylum-seeker centres, unemployment guidance centres and social welfare centres have all joined the cause in support of the trade unions' demands in bargaining over a new collective agreement. The fact that daycare centres remained closed, forcing parents to make emergency arrangements, captured considerable public attention.
Employees in the sector are standing by their demand for a 7.5% pay rise over two years, and have rejected the final offer of 5.4% from the sector's employers' organisation, Vereniging van Ondernemingen in de Gepremieerde en Gesubsidieerde sector (VOG). The 70,000 or so welfare sector workers view with envy the collective agreement that was recently reached in healthcare (NL9805181N). The prevailing notion is that employees in the welfare sector are underpaid. Employers, which have offered to raise the final salary of daycare centre managers, also partly hold this view. Nevertheless, employers would rather keep this question out of the current negotiations.
As is the case in healthcare and education, negotiations in the welfare sector must run through complicated channels: after consulting with the employers, the government sets the budget, after which employers and employees hammer out the collective agreement. Thus, in their discussions with the government, employers must anticipate the results of the negotiations with the unions. Time and time again, this has proved to be no simple task: agreements are reached with difficulty, and employees threaten to strike or actually do so. When this happens, employers are burdened with a budget deficit, and then appeal to the government for extra funds.
Negotiations regarding an agreement for the childcare sector are even more complex since the costs are shared by government (40%), companies (20%) and parents (40%). The government is prepared to raise its contribution as part of an effort to improve childcare facilities (and to reduce waiting lists), but expects the other parties to follow suit. However, AbvaKabo, the most important union in this sector, feels that parents already pay enough and that the government's offer should be used to increase pay and reduce workloads. All in all, this is a very complex negotiating environment for all parties concerned, and the unions have added fuel to the fire by calling a strike. Solutions are now being sought more earnestly behind the scenes, but for the time being, relay strikes continue throughout the country.
Eurofound recommends citing this publication in the following way.
Eurofound (1998), Strikes in welfare sector in support of pay demands, article.
