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A dispute in the Dutch secondary education sector, which had been brewing for several months, finally erupted into a national "relay" strike in February 1998. The teachers' workload is at the heart of the conflict: the trade unions demand that the number of teaching hours be reduced, while the employers respond that they lack the funds.
On a scale hitherto unknown, Dutch secondary school teachers responded to the call of education trade unions for one-day "relay" strikes in various regions of the country in 1998. At the same time, attendance at a national protest rally was also remarkably large. The situation in secondary education has become onerous for the teachers, who believe that their workload has grown to intolerable levels, and the unions are demanding the reduction in the classroom hours of a full-time instructor from 28 to 26 a week. The unions have not only found support within the ranks of the teachers themselves, but their view is also powerfully supported by the conclusions of a recently published OECD international comparative study: in few other European countries do teachers work so many hours.
The dispute is further complicated by the fact that school governing bodies and unions have recently become the collective bargaining parties in secondary education, while the Minister of Education merely decides on the budget. Therefore the governing bodies can plainly point to the fact that they do not have the financial resources to meet the demands, while the Minister views himself as not being party to the dispute. As a result, both negotiating parties vehemently assert that, in the recent past, no realistic agreement has been reached with the Minister.
The current dispute, which started in 1997 during negotiation of the present collective agreement, was initially directed against the Minister. In the end, he refused to offer compensation for an increase in social insurance premium rates - rates which had been introduced the year before to pay for the flexible pensions of older teachers. Subsequently the unions came into conflict with the employers in education (that is, the governing bodies) over a uniform arrangement, applicable at all schools, for older workers' entitlement to leave based on length of service and a reduction in working hours.
Because the employers terminated the present collective agreement on the same day as the national protest rally, the unions have threatened to hold another nationwide teachers’ strike in March 1998. Recently, the Minister offered arbitration but this option was rejected by both negotiating parties. However, now that the dispute has escalated to such unusual proportions (namely a strike) the expectation is that the parties will once again return to the negotiating table.