Trade union FNV has won a court case against subcontractor Remak, active as labour recruiter at a power station site in the port Eemshaven. Remak was paying its Polish employees €9 per hour, instead of the €11.50 that was agreed in the sector’s collective agreement. In court, the parties agreed that Remak would pay the collective agreement wage as well as respect working hour reductions and holidays of the collective agreement. The deal still has to pass the Remak board of directors. In general collective agreements in the Netherlands are made generally binding for an entire sector by the ministry of Labour. Generally binding agreements have to be respected by all employers active in the sector, even those that were not part of the negotiations. The court case is part of a long trade union campaign against unequal pay in the Eemshaven, as reported in the May newsletter. Labour recruitment agency Remak is notoriously known for not respecting local pay and working conditions all over Europe.
English: http://www.bnr.nl/topic/beurs/889140-1208/fnv-cao-loon-voor-800-polen
http://processengineering.theengineer.co.uk/anger-over-foreign-worker-wage-rates ...
http://www.world-psi.org/en/dutch-unions-ensure-wages-polish-workers
For more information, please contact the editor Jan Cremers, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies (AIAS) cbn-aias@uva.nl or the communications officer at the ETUI, Mariya Nikolova mnikolova@etui.org. For previous issues of the Collective bargaining newsletter please visit http://www.etui.org/E-Newsletters/Collective-bargaining-newsletter. You may find further information on the ETUI at www.etui.org, and on the AIAS at www.uva-aias.net.
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