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Please give brief details of:
If there have been no political events of note over the past 12 months, please give details of the government currently in power
There were no elections in 2005; local elections will be held in May 2006.
The coalition government, still in power, was formed after the January 2003 elections. It consists of three parties, the Christian Democratic Appeal (Christen Democratisch Appel, CDA) with 44 seats in the Lower House, the liberal Party for Freedom and Democracy (Vereniging voor Vrijheid en Democratie, VVD) with 28 seats and the social liberal Democrats (D66) with six seats.
Due to the compromises finally reached in 2004 between government and social partners on crucial provisions in the social security system, 2005 was a relatively quiet, but still unsettled year. The government and the social partners reached accord on wage moderation, the Occupational Disability Insurance Act (WAO), life-cycle leave arrangements and early retiremant, daycare, lifelong learning, and age-related personnel policy (NL0502101F). In 2005 there were no mass demonstrations or strikes to protest against government policy. The strikes at local level at fire brigades in favour of the existing provision for funcional early retirement however, voice a high degree of social unrest. This unrest stems from two issues in particular, which featured throughout 2005 in and outside collective bargaining: early retirement, pensions and the level of continued wage payment during the first two-year period of illness.
Please give details of the number of collective agreements negotiated in 2005 by level (eg national, sectoral, company), compared with numbers of agreements negotiated in 2004. Outline any trends/shifts between levels of bargaining.
No significant changes took place during 2005 with respect to the level of concluded collective agreements (primarily sectoral), although one can observe a slight trend towards company level agreements. As in 2004 a delay in the process of concluding agreements can be seen.
Please give details of significant collective bargaining developments concerning the following specific themes:
Pension-related issues have featured strongly in the 2005 collective bargaining rounds, as they did in 2004. Employers are cutting the costs of early retirement schemes and at a number of companies pension risk is being shifted towards employees. Meanwhile, the financial position of occupational pension funds has improved significantly, while the government has announced its intention to introduce a new Pension Act. (NL0507102F; see also NL0509102F; NL0512104F)
Please make sure you fill out all of these sections. If there is no relevant information, please state this.
(In this section, where no statistics [from official or other sources] are available on the number of collective agreements, or of agreements on specific themes, please give your view of how collective bargaining has developed in 2005, referring to the main events of the year from your own monitoring for EIRO purposes.)
Are there any legislative developments which have taken place in your country in 2005 which are not mentioned in any of the other sections? If so, please give details, including a short contextual summary.
Three issues are to be mentioned here.
• In the process of reforming the unemployment insurance government accepted the SER´s recommendation in April 2005;
• In its reform of the Working Conditions Act government accepted the SER´s unanimous recommendation in July 2005;
• The Dutch Lower House adopted a legislative proposal that amends the manner in which occupational health services are organised, in December 2004.
(See for the SER´s recommendation on simplification of the Working Hours Act, question 2, working time.)
In April 2005, the Social and Economic Council issued a unanimous recommendation, requested by the government, on reform of the Unemployment Insurance Act (WW). The questions to address were whether the current WW is ´future-proof´ and whether the Dutch WW system does not lag behind in relation to those in other EU countries. Subsequently, the government announced that it would be implementing the recommendation, virtually in its entirety. (NL0506102F)
The key points of the proposed WW are as follows:
• A significant decrease in the maximum benefit duration;
• More stringent employment-history requirements;
• Reforming short-term benefit;
• Determining the duration of the WW benefit on the basis of actual employment history;
• Tightening the reintegration obligations imposed on benefit recipients and shifting the reintegration initiative from the benefit recipient to the Employee Insurance Schemes Implementing Body (Uitvoeringsorgaan Werknemersverzekeringen, UWV);
• Preserving a separate income scheme for older unemployed individuals following receipt of WW benefits. (NL0506102F)
The unemployment insurance system will be fundamental reformed, by cutting the maximum period of benefit entitlement and tightening the rules on the previous period of employment required. At the same time, there will be greater emphasis on prevention of unemployment, reintegration back into work and activation of unemployed people, along with changes to dismissals law.
In July 2005, the government accepted a recommendation from the SER on reform of the Working Conditions Act. This involves giving the social partners greater responsibility in the implementation of health and safety at work and cutting the number of rules and regulations, by distinguishing between objectives and means. The government will take responsibility for the objectives, with the Labour Inspectorate monitoring compliance, and employers and employees becoming jointly responsible for the methods used to achieve the objectives. (NL0508102F)
In December 2004, the Lower House of Dutch parliament adopted a legislative proposal that amends the manner in which occupational health services are organised. There will be farreaching liberalisation of the occupational health services market, with employee participation playing a central role in arranging provision. The change also responds to a ruling issued in May 2003 by the European Court of Justice concerning the obligation on employers to give priority to in-house expertise in organising preventive health and safety measures. (NL0501103F)
Have there been any changes in the organisation and role of the social partners in your country (eg trade union or employers’ organisation mergers or decisions about participation in bargaining) during 2005? If so, please give details.
In 2005 no significant changes in the organization and role of the social partners took place. Notable though is the creation of a new union for young employees (NL0510103F). The union is directed at ´young professionals´; the main contested issue is pensions. The union claims that ´young´ employees contribute unproportianally compared to the elder worker generations.
The main employers organisations, the Dutch Federation of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (MKB Nederland) and the Confederation of Dutch Industries and Employers (VNO-NCW) want to force an alliance. Members of MKB-Nederland have reacted sceptical; they are afraid the interests of small and medium-sized businesses will be neglected. (NL0511102N)
Please give brief details of major strikes and industrial action in your country during 2005 (including any statistics available, if only for part of the year). Please highlight any particularly significant developments which have taken place over the past year.
Throughout 2005 there were incidental strikes, (pre) pensions at the one hand, and redundancies and restructuring at the other hand, mainly the issue. (See NL0510102N)
Have there been any legislative or other significant developments in the area of employee information and consultation (and other forms of participation) in your country in 2005? Have there been any developments related to the implementation of the European Company Statute (EU0206202F) or the Directive on national information and consultation rights (EU0204207F), or any debate on these issues (eg any indication on the extent to which companies headquartered in your country intend to use the European Company Statute to incorporate as a European Company)? Have there been any significant developments connected with European Works Councils over the past year?
The main development with regard to legislation was ironically enough the withdrawal of the bill of a new law for works councils on 5 October 2005, due to insufficient support in the Lower House. Both the employers and the unions have welcomed the withdrawal, be it for different reasons. At the end of 2004, the Law on works councils has been amended slightly to implement the information and consultation directive. On 1 April 2005, the law on the role of employees in the European company finally entered into force. This law will be changed in 2006 or 2007 to account for Directive connected to the Statute for the European Co-operative Society (SCE).
In October 2004, the law on employee participation in the supervisory board (SB) was altered (NL0410102N). This new so-called structure law gave works councils an enhanced right to nominate up to one third of the members of the SB, moving the Dutch system a little bit in the direction of the German system of Mitbestimmung. The new law does not appear to have a great impact as yet.
Please give a summary of the debate on labour migration, including any discussion of the proposed EU services Directive (the Bolkestein Directive). If you are reporting from an old Member State (the EU15 including Norway), please give details of whether your government has put into place restrictions on labour migration from new Member States (as permitted by the EU) and whether it intends to lift these restrictions in 2006. Please include any statistics if available and/or brief details of any particularly interesting cases.
If you are reporting from a new Member State (the 10 that joined on 1 May 2004) or a candidate country, please summarise the debate on labour migration from your country to the old Member States, including any relevant statistics and/or a summary of any interesting cases. If any issue has been reported already in EIRO, readers can be pointed to the relevant EIRO inbrief or feature for a more detailed overview.
The Dutch government has been following a rather restrictive policy on labour migration. Nevertheless, the number of migrant workers, especially from Poland, has risen considerably. The government expects the number of employees from central and eastern European countries to increase rapidly if the Dutch labour market is opened up completely. In view of this, the government will be maintaining the existing restrictions until 1 May 2006.
Employers’ organisations have repeatedly criticised the government policy and asked for a more open attitude, especially with regard to the upper strata of the labour market. Employers complain about the bureaucracy and the time consuming procedures they have to follow to hire foreign specialist workers (NL0507103F).
The response to the proposed Services Directive was mildly positive in the Netherlands. The Dutch unions and cabinet are committed to the recommendation issued by the Social and Economic Council (SER). The SER is a tripartite body representing the business sector, employees and crown-appointed members. Together, they mirror the socio-economic makeup of Dutch society. Employees and employers (the business sector) are represented by their respective centralised organisations. The third party comprising the crown-appointed members represents the general interest.
In terms of the Services Directive, the SER is positive about introducing a European directive to shape an internal market for services. The SER recommendation even goes so far as to state that the current proposal put forward by the European Commission falls short in a number of areas. There should be far more guarantees with respect to the proper functioning of the country of origin principle and the free movement of services established on this basis (NL0512103F).
Please give details of any developments in collective bargaining or social dialogue in the area of corporate social responsibility. This may take the form of company-level agreements, international agreements in multi-national companies that are headquartered in your country, or agreements at national or sectoral level. If no examples of agreements exist, please give an overview of the debate in your country.
Corporate social responsibility is, with some exceptions, mainly a political issue, and does not feature highly (or not at all) on the collective bargaining agenda. With regard to social dialogue, it is a regular subject on the agenda of the Social and Economic Council, the tripartite advisory body for social and economic affairs.
The cabinet concentrates on encouraging companies to be more transparent (in their annual accounts, or in separate reports on the subject) on the relevant issues and fulfils the role of monitor. It appears the so-called leading group has increased in recent years.
In exceptional cases, unions and or NGO’s voice their concern on the behaviour of individual companies, e.g. in doing business with Myanmar, or in the trading of arms.
The debate concentrates on the question to what extend CSR is more than just creating an image.
This is a topic that encompasses part-time work, fixed-term contracts, temporary work through agencies, teleworking, on-call working or any other atypical types of working. Have there been any legislative or other significant developments - such as collective agreements or social partner policy statements - during the past year concerning these types of atypical work?
Further, if there have been any significant trends concerning the growth of a particular form of atypical work in your country, please include brief statistical details and a summary of the debate and/or direction of possible action on that issue.
In 2005, self-employed individuals and their employers have been awarded greater security based on the Declaration of Independent Contractor Status (Verklaring Arbeidsrelatie, VAR) In this, the tax authorities and the body implementing employee insurance schemes (Uitvoeringsinstituut Werknemersverzekeringen, UWV) indicate if they recognise the working relationships of the self-employed as independent labour or as labour in respect of employment, or that they simply do not know. The security for self-employed individuals and their employers is that there will no longer be penalties if the self-employed are deemed to be employees in retrospect (NL0504103F)
In late 2005, the Dutch Trade Union Federation (Federatie Nederlandse Vakbeweging, FNV) and the Dutch Federation of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (MKB-Nederland) called for the reinstatement of a public maternity benefit scheme for self-employed people. The scheme was abolished in 2004, with the idea being that it could be replaced by private insurance arrangements. However, in practice insurers have reportedly declined many applications and self-employed people have been deterred by high premiums. At the request of parliament, the government has also consulted the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the Dutch Equal Treatment Commission about whether it was entitled under international and EU law to abolish the maternity benefits (NL0512104F).
With regard to agency work, the most important event was the new collective agreement for the sector. Another important development is the tougher stand the government has taken towards illegal agencies, which have sprung up since the permit system has been abolished.
Have there been any other significant industrial relations developments over the past year which have not been mentioned above? If so, please give details.
For several years now the issue of remuneration of top management raises much attention. In 2005 the focus has shifted somewhat to the non-profit sector, where salaries have risen fast and in many cases surpass the salary of the PM. A bill has been sent to parliament with the aim put a cap on these salaries. A bill to give works councils an information right on salary developments has passed the First and Second Chamber, but has not entered into force.
In order to enable us to include a conclusion and forward-looking section at the end of each national contribution, please give an overview of the issues which are likely to dominate the coming year in your country.
In many respects, 2005 has been a transitional year. The cabinet has taken major steps to change the health care system and the system of disability benefits. All these changes enter into force on 1 January 2006, and at the moment of writing it is unclear what the effects will be. On several issues it is quite likely that social partners will try to use the collective bargaining process to ‘repair’ government measures.
From 2006 onwards, the wage freeze will end and the Cabinet has announced that 2006 (an election year) will be better for employees than the years before. The improved economic climate might induce unions to increase their demands, although the first signs are that moderate wage increases are more likely. Other issues with probably demand more attention, and it is likely, that -as in previous years- the dividing line will not run between the social partners themselves, but between the social partners on the one hand and Cabinet on the other.