The new government’ plans to reform industrial relations will face strong opposition from the unions. The plan runs completely counter to the objectives of the trade union movement. It includes attacks on collective bargaining, industrial action, protection against dismissal and much more. Some key elements of the reform proposal are: in collective bargaining, a shift away from the national sectoral level towards company-level agreements will be promoted, contrary to general EU policy as set out in the Minimum Wage Directive which promotes sectoral bargaining. In future, company agreements can be overridden by legislation. Today this is only possible through national collective agreements. In social dialogue, the threshold for compulsory consultation will be raised from 20 to 50 employees. The right to take political industrial action will be restricted.
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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.