Trade unions FNV and CNV are giving employers in regional transport a new ultimatum. Employers have until 20 February to respond to their collective labor agreement requirements.
If there is no response, new strikes will follow from 22 February. Employees in regional transport also went on strike throughout the country last week, out of dissatisfaction with their terms of employment.
Deadlock in collective bargaining
The trade unions and employers have reached an impasse in the negotiations about the large collective labor agreement in the regional transport, which applies to about 13,000 employees, mainly bus drivers. Before the strikes started, ultimatums were issued by both employers and unions. The unions threatened strikes if their demands were not met. Employers’ association VWOV, in turn, would cancel the collective labor agreement offer that was pending if there were to be a strike. The latter happened.
VWOV indicates that a salary increase of 11 percent spread over two years is the highest achievable. However, FNV and CNV respectively demand a wage increase of almost 17 percent over a year and a wage increase of 14 percent spread over eighteen months.
Stopped for five days
To reinforce these demands, the unions called on their members to stop working for five days last week. As a result, part of the regional transport was canceled. According to VWOV, only half of all buses drove on several days. Several trains were also cancelled. For example, on Friday, the Arriva trains did not run in the Achterhoek, Rivierenland and Limburg.
In addition to the negotiations on the large collective labor agreement, the negotiations on the smaller multimodal collective labor agreement are also deadlocked. This applies to approximately 1300 employees of carriers that offer both train and bus transport, such as Arriva and Keolis. This mainly concerns train staff. The VVMC trade union is negotiating for this collective labor agreement, as are the FNV and CNV. The last two unions also went on strike all week for this collective labor agreement. VVMC called on its members to strike only on Wednesdays and Fridays.