De Unie, in your interest

Your collective labor agreement and industry

Cao 2021 Garden seeds

January 28 2021

Tuinzaden employers: “only primary employment conditions in collective labor agreement”

Employers in the garden seed sector only want to make agreements about primary employment conditions in a new collective labor agreement. All other terms and conditions of employment should be agreed at company level with the works council (OR) or trade unions.

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If you were to agree with that idea, this would of course place serious demands on the training and education of works councils, on their time commitment and on their ability to hire expert negotiators and on facilities to inform staff, to involve them in the consultation and consulting the same staff. It is doubtful whether employers are aware of this.

What do employers in the garden seed industry actually want?

During the collective labor agreement consultations on 18 January, employers in the garden seed sector became “concrete” about what they “exactly” mean by the “framework collective agreement” and what they do and do not want to agree on in the new collective labor agreement. They only want to make agreements in the collective labor agreement about primary employment conditions, such as:

  • Working hours
  • Year hours
  • Holidays
  • Job groups
  • Salary scales
  • Pay on holidays
  • Surcharges.

The following subjects / agreements should disappear from the collective labor agreement:

  • Working hours
  • Sundays and holidays
  • Leave of absence
  • Incapacity for work
  • Fees

Agreements on this should be made at company level. In fact, this means that employers not only say “no” to most of the proposals in our proposal letter, but also want to undress the collective labor agreement and agree on many more matters at company level.

Clearly?

In any case, we now have an idea what employers are thinking about and what they would like. Whether we should be happy with that is another matter. We do not yet see any reason to withdraw the proposals from our proposal letter, as they are based on our experiences over the past year and the wishes of our members. It never hurts to take a critical look at the collective labor agreement from time to time. This also happens annually / biannually. However, employers have indicated that they want to remove important elements from the collective labor agreement. We do not agree with that. Employers tried to meet us by making 3 proposals that should give us more confidence in decentralized agreements:

  1. They are prepared to make more concrete agreements in the collective labor agreement about the spending of the 1,25% budget for sustainable employability. For example, they would agree that this budget should be spent on absenteeism prevention, training and special projects aimed at sustainable employability;
  2. They are prepared to develop a step-by-step plan for employees who are no longer able to perform their work, by first looking at whether the position can be adjusted and then whether another position can be found and only then to see whether (on individual basis) an early retirement scheme is possible;
  3. They want to work with us to strengthen the position and role of the Works Councils. All employers are not specific about this.

We have indicated that we can discuss this further, but that this will not change our view of the content of the collective labor agreement.

How further?

We have agreed to take a critical look at the point of view of employers and to see whether this still offers opportunities to reach a collective labor agreement. We also asked employers whether they are willing to make agreements in the collective labor agreement about fallback scenarios if works councils or trade unions do not agree with companies on the interpretation of certain terms of employment. After this round of negotiations, it has become somewhat clearer, but not easier to reach a collective labor agreement. We will talk further on Wednesday 3 February

Legal expenses insurance does not participate in the consultation

Employee organizations are the ideal discussion partner for employers. Plantum experiences the negotiations as difficult and now thinks it can do better business with works councils. What probably plays a role here is that Plantum questions our representativeness. The support of De Unie should also be enlarged for that reason. Make potential members aware of the benefits of membership, and especially remind them that their legal expenses insurance policy is not participating in the negotiations. Make sure employers cannot ignore us.

Questions

If you have any questions and / or comments as a result of the foregoing, please contact me on 06-5252 2067 or john.kapteijn@unie.nl.

 

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