On 19 April, employers’ association FME-CWM and the four unions involved, FNV Bondgenoten, CNV Vakmensen, De Unie and VHP2, reached a basic collective agreement with a duration of 26 months, from 1 May 2011 to 30 June 2013, for the metal and electronic engineering industry (‘large metals’), covering about 150,000 employees. Central are measures to retain workers and have them reaching the pension age in a healthy way. The wage deal is 4.75%, divided as follows: 1.15% by 1 July 2011; 1% by 1 January 2012; 1.1% by 1 July 2012, and 1% by 1 January 2013. The employers will pay the full fee for the transitional arrangement for early pensioning, which means an extra net wage advantage of 0.5%. The youth wage scales for over 22 of age will be abolished, implying that entrants in that age group will be paid the wages of craft workers. All union negotiators showed their satisfaction wih the results and advised their membership to vote in favour.
Dutch: http://www.fnvbondgenoten.nl/mijnbranche/branches/metalektro/nieuws/343019 ...
http://www.cnvvakmensen.nl/actueel/nieuws/artikel/item/cnv-vakmensen-tevreden ...
This article was published in the Collective Bargaining Newsletter. It aims to facilitate information exchange between trade unions and to support the work of ETUC's collective bargaining committee. For more information, please contact the editor Maarten van Klaveren, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies (AIAS) M.vanKlaveren@uva.nl. You may find further information on the ETUI at www.etui.org, and on the AIAS at www.uva-aias.net. © ETUI aisbl, Brussels 2011.