ECJ EUROPEAN Cleaning Journal

Jacco Vonhof, chairman of the Dutch Association of Cleaning Research (VSR), reports on negotiations on working conditions in the Netherlands.

At the beginning of this year employers and employees in the Dutch cleaning sector undertook renewed negotiations on working conditions. Agreements on wages, bonuses, overtime payment, probation or pension are stipulated in a collective labour agreement (CAO). This is how the government intends to prevent competitive conditions.

A CAO is concluded by employers/organisations representing employers and workers organisations (usually trade unions). Parties with a sectoral CAO can request from the government that the CAO be made applicable to the sector as a whole. Are the employers not party to the CAO but do they fall within the sector? They will then have to comply with the CAO provisions that have been declared generally binding. Almost all sectoral CAOs are declared generally binding, including the cleaning CAO. As a result, about 125,000 cleaning workers now have a new CAO.

One of the commitments in the new cleaning CAO is a total wage increase of 3.75 per cent for the period January 1 2017 to January 1 2019. With a national average of 1.6 per cent, this is a positive result. The end-of-year bonus will also increase slightly.

But even more interesting for the future of cleaning workers are the social developments that have an effect on the cleaning profession. It has therefore been decided the cleaning sector will investigate a number of developments. One of them is robotisation/automation and its impact on the labour market. Is the fear that people have of being marginalised justified or does this offer opportunities?

It was furthermore agreed that trade organisations will determine whether task integration of facility professions such as cleaning, catering and security, is possible. This will give rise to the profession of ‘facility assistant’ with perhaps its own CAO in the future. As a result more full-time jobs will be created.

A third pilot is the training fund, which needs to improve the sustainable employability of personnel. Cleaning is a physically demanding occupation. The sector uses the training fund to invest in training towards an occupation outside of this line of business. Truck driver, for example.

This does not seem to be in the interest of the sector, but on the other hand it enables employers to prevent dissatisfaction and perhaps even protracted illness. To keep staff physically and mentally healthy, that’s what it’s about.

While the process was marked a few years ago by rows and strikes, it went more smoothly this time around. Probably because we kept the conversations going with all the parties after the previous CAO was concluded. The pressure is therefore reduced when negotiations start again.

With the new CAO, employers and employees have taken another step together in the direction of an occupation that is increasingly considered worthy by the outside world. The enhanced relationship helps to improve and professionalise the occupation. And this is, just like the CAO, in everyone’s interest.