Netherlands - Unions focus on abuse of flexible contracts - January 11, 2011

The leaders of the major trade union confederations, FNV and CNV, in their New Year speeches both announced to focus on the widespread abuse of flexible and short-term contracts, as they called it. FNV president Agnes Jongerius referred to figures of the official UWV institute that one-third of all Dutch employees is currently working on a flexible contract. According to a FNV survey of December 2010, 60% of flexible workers is not working as call-out or short-term staff by choice. According to Jongerius, the FNV wants the government to make sure workers on flexible contracts have better rights, including better access to social security benefits. CNV president Jaap Smit said to agree that working patterns are changing and labour market reforms needed, but “We must ask ourselves how we can put healthy limits on these developments.”

English: http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2011/01/unions_to_focus ...

Dutch: De Volkskrant and NRC-Handelsblad, 11 January 2011

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.