Dutch civil servants agree four-year pay deal

Civil servants in the Netherlands are to see their pay increase by 13.2% over the coming four years.

The new civil service settlement, reached on 26 April following two months of intermittent strike action, runs for 48 months (from the start of 2007 to the end of 2010) and is made up of three key elements:

• pay has immediately increased by 2.3% (backdated to January), to be followed by further increases of 2.0% each in April 2008 and 2009;

• the annual end-of-year cash bonus is being raised by €100 to €1,200 – worth 0.2% of salary overall; and

• the salary-linked element of the end-of-year bonus will increase in four yearly stages, from the current 1.6% to 8.3% of total annual salary by 2010 – meaning that it will be equivalent to a full month’s salary.

Affecting approximately 120,000 workers, the agreement was signed by four unions, of which the largest is ABVAKABO. Its chief negotiator, Jan Willem Dieten, said the strikes – which particular involved staff in the country’s prisons, tax offices and customs offices – had undoubtedly been key to reaching agreement. “In recent years the civil service has got less than other public servants,” Dieten told Workplace Report, “so we set out to get 3% more than the normal annual increases of 2.5%.”