The collective labor agreement proposal that has been enforced at the Dutch Railways can safely be called groundbreaking, with a wage increase that has not occurred since the 1970s.
The NS employees will receive an additional 9.25 percent in 18 months, plus two one-off payments of 1000 euros. In total, this amounts to a wage increase of approximately 12 percent in a year and a half, about 8 percent on an annual basis. That is considerably higher than the 7.5 percent that the NS put on the table in its last offer.
Inflation is currently slightly higher, which means that there will still be a loss of purchasing power in the short term, but in combination with the government’s support measures, railway employees will probably survive the winter well, especially if the fall in the gas price of continued in the last few days.
The collective labor agreement negotiations at the NS were of great importance to the FNV. Finally, the union was able to show its teeth again. At the NS, the degree of organization, the number of employees who are union members, is still high enough to shut down the company for days. This is no longer the case with most other companies and organizations.
The union was so confident that it demanded automatic price compensation (APC). In addition, wages rise in line with inflation, so that purchasing power remains stable under all circumstances. That turned out to be too ambitious. APC is also not a good idea in today’s unstable world with prices moving rapidly up and down.
It is good that unions and management have come to an agreement. The Netherlands has an interest in a strong rail company that can be a good alternative to other forms of transport. The strikes came just as the NS was recovering from the blow that the corona virus had dealt.
The agreement saddles the railways, which have already suffered significant losses since the pandemic, with a new cost item. Part of this will be passed on to the sole shareholder, the Dutch government, which already provides the company with almost a billion euros in subsidy every year.
The real litmus test for the strength of the unions comes with companies that have to bear the burden of the high wage increase themselves and settle for lower profits. Only if substantially higher wages are also enforced there, can the trend of recent decades, in which an increasingly smaller share of company income went to employees, be reversed.
The position of the newspaper is expressed in the Volkskrant Commentaar. It is created after a discussion between the commentators and the editor-in-chief.