van het Kaar, Robbert

In September 1999, the Dutch government presented proposals for a radical reform of the tax system, whereby the tax base will be broadened, the tax burden shifted and higher environmental taxes levied. The social partners have generally been critical of the plan.

The total number of requests to terminate employment contracts declined in the Netherlands in 1998, according to the Annual Report on termination statistics, issued in summer 1999. However, the number of requests related to occupational disability has increased.

In April 1999, the Dutch social partners reached agreement within the Labour Foundation on a framework for the further individualisation of terms of employment. Whilst the essential lines of collective agreements will be retained under the Foundation's recommendations, certain conditions of employment may be swapped within a company on a "multiple-choice" basis.

Filing for a company's bankruptcy or petitioning for the suspension of payments usually spells trouble for its workers, but a Dutch case at the beginning of June 1999 suggests that it can also provide an effective way for employees and their representatives to bring pressure to bear on their employer.

In May 1999, Unilever signed a new collective agreement with trade unions in the Netherlands. Starting in 2001, it will allow employees to determine their own package of terms and conditions, containing individualised elements within a clearly established framework.

At the end of April 1999, local government workers across a number of Dutch municipalities launched a series of protests in support of their claims in the bargaining round covering some 180,000 municipal workers (NL9904138N [1]). On 27 April, public transport workers went out on a 24-hour strike in Rotterdam and Dordrecht. An injunction issued by the Rotterdam courts banned workers at the city's sanitation service, Roteb, from beginning strikes planned to coincide with the Queen's Day (Koninginnendag) celebrations on 30 April and on 1 May. The municipality maintained that piles of uncollected rubbish would potentially cause problems after the Dutch football finals scheduled to be played in Rotterdam at that time. [1] www.eurofound.europa.eu/ef/observatories/eurwork/articles/civil-service-negotiations-three-disputes-and-an-agreement

On 19 May 1999, to the surprise of many, the second-term "purple coalition" government, comprising the Labour Party (PvdA), the Liberal Party (VVD) and the Liberal Democrats (D66), disbanded. D66 withdrew because it did not achieve the two-thirds majority required in the First Chamber of parliament to introduce the use of referenda into the Dutch legislative process. The vote against the move by VVD senator Hans Wiegel was decisive.

Collective bargaining in 1999 for various groups of Dutch civil servants has been fraught with difficulties. By April, an agreement reached for 118,000 government officials marked the only progress, with deadlock in talks for local government officers, university employees and employees in the higher vocational training sector.

The central works council of the Dutch Employment Service has withdrawn its support from management. The move was taken in March 1999, against the backdrop of an impending reorganisation following a string of earlier reorganisations.

Negotiations are not running smoothly in some sectors during the Netherlands' 1999 bargaining round. One of the trade unions representing banking workers angered the other unions in the sector by putting the employers' final bid to its members in March 1999. Meanwhile, negotiations in the construction sector ground to a halt again, rasing the possibility that the sector could be without a collective agreement as of 1 April.