On 9 and 10 February, the chairpersons of the three union confederations, FNV, CNV and MHP, unanimously rejected the idea of nominal zero wage increases. A few days earlier, president Bernard Wientjes of the main employers’ association VON-NCW had held a plea for a “national zero line”. FNV president Agnes Jongerius reacted that the average wage increase is already lower than inflation, and that realisation of Wientjes’ plan would aggravate economic stagnation. CNV chairman Jaap Smit said that in some industries and companies collective bargaining would remain to allow for real wage increases.
Dutch: De
Volkskrant, 10 February 2012;
http://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2012/02/09/werkgevers-willen-nullijn
...
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 future editor – as from the March 2012 issue – Jan Cremers, at the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies (AIAS) cbn-aias@uva.nl, or Mariya Nikolova mnikolova@etui.org, communications officer at the ETUI. The editor of this issue was Maarten van Klaveren, M.vanKlaveren@uva.nl. 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. © ETUI aisbl, Brussels 2012. To unsubscribe, please contact Mariya Nikolova.