If the shortage of personnel is great, the bag of tricks has to be opened. PostNL will offer all its postal deliverers a permanent contract, the company announced on Tuesday. From now on, new postmen will be immediately employed on a permanent basis. The approximately 1,000 deliverers who still work on a temporary contract will also be offered a permanent position.
The postal company employs around 16,500 deliverers. That is not enough to deliver all the mail on time. The company has 1,300 to 1,500 vacancies.
Until recently, new deliverers were first given a temporary contract for seven months. An employer may extend such a temporary contract a maximum of two times in a three-year period. By skipping those temporary contracts – with the exception of two months of probation – PostNL wants to present itself as a more attractive employer. “It is important to offer people something in this tight labor market,” said a spokesperson.
PostNL shows: employers have to work harder to get people on board. The demand for personnel is high everywhere. There are now 133 vacancies for every 100 unemployed.
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“PostNL apparently does not want to risk the problems that you now see at Schiphol,” says Joop Schippers, professor of labor economics in Utrecht. At the airport, the number of flights will be limited for months and travelers will have to wait in line for hours due to insufficient staff.
No advance yet
Other employers preceded PostNL with employment contracts that offer more security. Swissport, which handles baggage at Schiphol, among other things, converted the temporary contract of one hundred employees into permanent employment. And until the beginning of July, new employees were immediately given a permanent position. The same story at steak restaurant chain Loetje: new employees can be hired immediately.
Nevertheless, figures from the Central Bureau of Statistics not yet see an advance of the permanent contract. About 56 percent of working Dutch people have one, and that share has been virtually stable for years. A year ago this was even slightly higher, at 57 percent. The strong growth in jobs last year was largely due to flexible work.
Only within the flexible contracts is a shift towards greater security. Employees are more often given a temporary contract with the prospect of permanent employment, reported the CBS in May. On the contrary, the number of uncertain on-call contracts is decreasing.
Remarkably enough, the increasingly acute staff shortages are therefore not yet visible in the growth of the number of permanent contracts. But changes in the labor market seldom happen ‘overnight’, says Schippers. “Particularly for young people, a temporary contract was the standard. Employers have been used to that for years.”
Now companies need to learn that staff availability is one of the most important factors for survival. Schippers: “Thirty years ago, the main question was: do I have enough orders? Staff were there enough. That has fundamentally changed.”
Higher wages
Employers can of course go out of their way to attract staff, such as increasing salaries or improving other working conditions. For years there were no major wage increases, but now wages are rising again, also under pressure from the rapid price increases. Average wage increases of around 3.5 percent have been agreed in collective labor agreements in recent months.
PostNL also raised salaries. Postal workers’ wages will increase by nearly 3.6 percent per year over the next two years. In addition, in some regions, the company introduced a bonus for employees who nominate a new colleague.
PostNL’s decision will make other employers think, Schippers expects, especially those with similar jobs in sectors with shortages, such as logistics and newspaper delivery. “If you now work at a courier company and see this news, you can think: would that work be something for me too?” This can encourage competitors to offer more security.
In the meantime, the government is working on legal measures to reduce flexwork, such as a ban on uncertain on-call contracts and making temporary work more expensive. Last month, Minister Karien van Gennip (Social Affairs, CDA) presented plans that still require a lot of elaboration.
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Are new laws still necessary if employers are already offering more permanent contracts due to the shortage? As far as Skippers are concerned, yes. The laws will then have the function of ‘locking the door’ to ensure that all employers give their employees enough security, he says. And it can also help boards convince their shareholders, who may see more risks in cutting away the ‘flexible shell’. “Then you can say: we do not only want this, it is also required by law.”