A long, hot summer for the government starts before spring has even arrived. Tomorrow, civil servants will stop work in protest against the zero line that the cabinet wants to apply for them, which means no salary increase and no inflation adjustment for the servants of the state. Government services will be difficult to reach for a day, a demonstration on the Malieveld is planned.
It will be a foretaste for the new Jetten cabinet. It is the first major action against the new cabinet and will certainly not be the last. The unions are threatening to mobilize the entire working population of the Netherlands against the coalition plans to increase the state pension age in line with life expectancy. The government believes this will allow it to save 2.8 billion euros per year.
The adopted motion by the Markuszower and SGP faction on Thursday to soften that plan cannot remedy this. The unions want the AOW plans to be completely scrapped, they made clear in a joint statement the same day. Preparations to have a full Malieveld have already been started.
The unions will visit Prime Minister Jetten in the Catshuis on Monday. Perhaps he and Minister of Social Affairs Hans Vijlbrief (also D66) would be better off serving an iced coffee as a playful reception rather than a cup of coffee to respond to the unions’ statement that “this cabinet combines an outstretched hand and hot coffee with ice-cold behavior.”
Understandable anger
The visit will most likely be short. The mitigations suggested by the motion, such as an exception for people with heavy jobs or foremen who started working at a very young age, are not enough for the unions.
They view the proposals as a violation of the 2019 pension agreement, which was concluded with the same coalition parties. It was agreed that a one-year extension of life expectancy will lead to a state pension eight months later.
‘A deal is a deal’, he also said chairman Kim Putters of the Social-Economic Council, in which trade unions are represented together with employers, in a hearing in the House of Representatives this week. According to him, the 2/3 coupling was “agreed for a reason.” He pointed out that people with a demanding job or poorer health are at greater risk of becoming unemployed or disabled in the last years of their lives. In response against Fidelity Employers’ organization VNO NCW also said it understands the unions’ anger.
Hand grenades
The AOW extension was previously referred to as a hand grenade in the outstretched hand of Prime Minister Jetten and his ministers to trade unions and employers. And there are more of those hand grenades. The unions have also indicated that other austerity plans totaling 6 billion euros are unacceptable. as colleague Tan Tunali wrote earlier.
This includes, among other things:
- Retrenchment of disability benefits, including the abolition of a higher benefit for people who have been permanently disabled.
- Halving the duration of unemployment benefits to one year.
- Only half a month of unemployment benefit is accrued for each year worked.
New Wassenaar Agreement?
The coalition parties have always indicated in their defense that with the increasing aging of the population, the welfare state is unsustainable and interventions are inevitable. It advice last autumn from the Budget Space Working Group of a collection of top civil servants is a welcome argument for this for the new ministers.
Of the measures now mentioned by the cabinet, that group of civil servants only mentions the 1-on-1 extension of the AOW. The VVD is the only party that included this recommendation in its election manifesto, as can be seen from reading back the calculation by the CPB. D66 is the party that included the reduction of the unemployment benefit in its programme, while the CDA advocated an extension of the unemployment benefit before the elections. The interventions in the WIA cannot be found in any of the parties.
The question is whether the government is not overshooting its target by pushing through these tough interventions in social security before consultations with social partners have even begun. It is true that Jetten and other cabinet members praise the polder and say they want to reach a package of agreements with unions and employers. But that is difficult if one of the parties already feels seriously offended in advance.
There are calls for a new Wassenaar Agreement from 1982. Famous because, despite soured and polarized relations, the unions, employers and the first Lubbers cabinet managed to agree on wage moderation in exchange for a reduction in working hours. This was later seen as the seed for a major economic recovery and strengthening of the competitive position of the Dutch business community.
The timing now seems tricky. Conversation partners will hardly know each other. Both the largest trade union FNV and employers’ organization VNO-NCW have interim chairmen, while the CNV union will have a new chairperson as of April. They will still have to gain the trust of their supporters before they dare to reach far-reaching agreements. A little support from a cabinet that adopts a more empathetic attitude will be welcome for these new presidents.
What do you think: is the welfare state indeed in danger of becoming unaffordable? And what interventions in social security do you think should be considered? Let me know at [email protected]
