On May 16 and 17, employees of ICON drug research will stop working. The company, formerly known as PRA Health Sciences, has 840 employees in Assen and Groningen. “The fact that this is necessary for a company with billions of profits causes anger in the workplace,” says FNV director Chaim Korthof.
According to the FNV, the Dutch top of the Irish multinational has left opportunities, such as negotiations, to prevent the strike. “With a global profit of 7 billion euros in 2022, the Irish multinational is doing more than well,” says Korthof. But according to the FNV director, this does not lead to a just collective labor agreement. “We really tried everything to change the management’s mind, but I’m afraid it won’t sink in until people stop working.”
In addition, according to Korthof, it seems as if he is negotiating with someone who has no say. “The person who negotiates with us from ICON always indicates that it will be decided in Ireland. He then comes back with an offer and we have been negotiating for months.” According to the FNV director, it appears to be quite difficult to come to a collective labor agreement with the people in the Netherlands.
The strike will initially take place on Tuesday 16 May (from 08:00 to 12:00) and will continue all day on 17 May. “In time we will continue until we finally achieve a result. If it has not yielded anything on Wednesday, we will continue,” says Korthof.
There will be no strike at the department where volunteers are for the time being. Drugs are tested on these people. “We don’t want these people to end up in an unsafe situation.”
Dissatisfaction among employees has only increased in recent times. For example, just before Christmas, employees were told that they would not receive a Christmas package because the company wanted to cut costs. “And to make matters worse, when they thought something of that, they were also told that the staff themselves were unreasonable. That did not make the dissatisfaction any better,” says Korthof.
The dissatisfaction is also clearly visible in the growth of the number of FNV members within ICON. “We came there for the first time in January, when there were forty members. That has now grown to 400 and that shows once again how great the willingness and dissatisfaction is among the staff,” says Korthof.
The employees want to see a number of improvements reflected in a new collective labor agreement. “They want to see a repair on the wages because of the cost increases. In addition, a decent travel allowance that covers the costs they incur,” says Korthof. The employees also demand an end-of-year bonus of 2 percent. “They do have bonuses, but they never pay them out. They always have a reason for that. So the staff says: just do an end-of-year bonus, then we’ll be sure we’ll get money.”