VNG: agreement on collective labor agreement for garbage collectors and other municipal employees ANP
Dutch municipalities and trade unions have reached an agreement in principle on a new collective labor agreement for municipal employees, the Association of Dutch Municipalities (VNG) reports. This agreement was preceded by weeks of strikes at municipalities, during which no waste was collected in cities such as Utrecht, The Hague and Amsterdam. Those strikes are now suspended.
The VNG and trade unions FNV, CNV and PDO have now agreed that wages in the lowest scales will increase by 13 percent. This concerns, for example, the garbage collectors and employees of the city cleaning service. For the slightly higher scales, which include, for example, a special investigating officer (boa), an increase of about 12 percent has been agreed. Wages in the highest scales will rise by almost 7 percent, explains a VNG spokesperson.
VNG negotiator Ton Heerts announced last week during a trade union event in Utrecht that he would come up with a new collective labor agreement offer. He said he understood that the 5 percent increase in wages offered was too scant, but called the unions’ demands too high.