Pharmacies across the country will be closed for three days next week due to an employee strike. They will stop work on Monday 23, Tuesday 24 and Friday 27 December. “Because Christmas is on Wednesday and Thursday, this means that many public pharmacies will be closed for the entire Christmas week,” say trade unions FNV and CNV.
It is the second national strike at pharmacies, after the one on November 12. At that time, approximately 10,000 employees also gathered at the Malieveld in The Hague. According to FNV and CNV, this was the first national pharmacy strike in history.
The unions say that it can be annoying when patients stand in front of a closed door, “but insurers and employers have allowed it to get to this point. This is a dire necessity.”
Trade unions FNV and CNV want salaries to be increased by at least 6 percent retroactively from July 1. They also want the minimum wage to be increased to 16 euros per hour and more measures to reduce work pressure. The unions also demand that employees be paid for the time they spend preparing for the working day.
The employers offer 2 percent from July 1 and 5 percent from July 1 next year. They say they can no longer provide more due to the policies of health insurers and the government.
The pharmacy employees started their protest in September with punctuality actions. When these failed, about ten regional strikes followed in all provinces. They first lasted half a day, then a whole day. The national strike took place in mid-November.