Garbage collectors will return to work on Wednesday. In Den Bosch, among others, garbage collectors would go on strike for five days from Wednesday. But now that the Dutch municipalities and trade unions have reached an agreement in principle on a new collective labor agreement for municipal employees, the strikes have been suspended. This is reported by the Association of Dutch Municipalities (VNG).
This agreement was preceded by weeks of strikes at municipalities, during which no waste was collected in cities such as Utrecht, The Hague and Amsterdam. In Brabant, strikes would start on Wednesday in the municipalities of Den Bosch, Altena, Vught, Heusden, Bernheze and Oisterwijk.
The VNG and trade unions FNV, CNV and PDO have agreed that wages in the lowest scales will rise by 13 percent. This concerns, for example, the garbage collectors and employees of the city cleaning service. For the slightly higher scales, which include, for example, a special investigating officer (boa), an increase of about 12 percent has been agreed. Wages in the highest scales will rise by almost 7 percent, explains a VNG spokesperson.
VNG negotiator Ton Heerts announced last week during a trade union event in Utrecht that he would come up with a new collective labor agreement offer. He said he understood that the 5 percent increase in wages offered was too scant, but called the unions’ demands too high.
In the run-up to the strike, Omroep Brabant spoke with garbage man Carlo Peulen (57), who has been working at the garbage collection service in Den Bosch for ten years. “I have colleagues who can no longer make ends meet, he said on Tuesday. Garbage collectors in Tilburg have already put their work on hold before.
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