On 7 August in a groundbreaking move, Parliament approved a series of amendments to the Penal Code. This is a great victory for the trade union movement as any crimes committed against workers in their right to freedom of association will now be punishable with one to five years imprisonment or a fine of up to € 4,600. Trade unions won a 30-year long battle when Parliament approved these changes which criminalizes actions directed against the right of association of workers and employees. The amendment includes any offences committed against the right of workers to join trade unions, may it be through violence, threats, or in any other illegal way, which prevents someone from exercising their right to join a trade union by forcing them to renounce their membership in a trade union organization or by preventing them from creating one.
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For more information, please contact Paul de Beer or Oana Ciuca, De Burcht (Scientific Bureau for the Dutch Trade Union Movement) p.t.debeer@uva.nl or the Head of communications at the ETUI, Mehmet Koksal mkoksal@etui.org. For previous full issues of the Collective bargaining newsletter please visit https://www.etui.org/Newsletters/Collective-bargaining-newsletter or consult the archive with all articles in our database at www.cbnarchive.eu.
You may find further information on the ETUI at www.etui.org.