Bargaining for Social Rights at the Sectoral Level
(BARSORIS)
Policy Brief for the Kingdom of the Netherlands
Prof. Dr. Maarten Keune
AIAS
Project number VS/2013/403
Summary
International project coordinator
AIAS-University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Research consortium
Stichting VU-VUMS (The Netherlands)
Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona (Spain)
University of Leicester (United Kingdom)
Universita Degli Studi di Teramo (Italy)
Central European Labour Studies Institute (Slovakia)
Hans-Böckler-Stiftung (Germany)
Kobenhavns Universitet (Denmark)
Authors of the report on the Netherlands
Prof. Dr. Maarten Keune, Prof. Dr. Klara Boonstra, and Sean Stevenson
Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies-University of Amsterdam
Free University of Amsterdam - VU
Project duration
December 2013 – January 2015
Project reference number
VS/2013/403
Website
http://www.uva-aias.net/409
Research Aims
The study uncovers the challenges associated with
the growth of precarious employment. It analyzes the
actions that trade unions and employers have
developed in addressing precarious employment in
the Netherlands. The analysis focuses on four
economic sectors, including healthcare, construction,
temporary agency work and industrial cleaning.
Objectives of the research
The objective of the research was to map the most recent developments in precarious
employment and social partner responses thereto in four selected sectors in the Netherlands.
The research focuses on sectors, where the use of flexible employment relations is a priori
high: construction, industrial cleaning, hospitals and temporary work agencies. The study also
addresses the drivers of precariousness and analyzes the effects that initiatives of sector-level
social partners produced. The findings and arguments are framed around the following
questions:
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 What comparative conclusions can be drawn from the sectoral case studies?
 What can be learned in general about precariousness and industrial relations?
 What positive and negative experiences emerge from dealing with precariousness through
industrial relations?
 What solutions, ideas and principles to deal with and reduce precariousness emerge from
the analysis?
Scientific approach and methodology
The report uses a qualitative and comparative approach to study various institutionalized
forms of precarious employment and the responses of social partners thereto. In particular, the
study presents evidence along a two-dimensional approach to precarious employment. This
approach allows mapping sectoral differences in the most important forms and trends in
precarious employment and to identify and compare the focus of social partner responses to
particular dimensions of precarious work. For this purpose, the authors have collected original
empirical evidence in 2013 and 2014. Evidence originates from expert interviews with social
partner representatives in the studied sectors. Additional evidence has been available through
a 2014 update to our earlier work on precarious work and trade union responses (BARSORI,
project number VS/2010/811). The study also presents relevant statistical evidence on
employment trends and forms in the Netherlands, and incorporates information from the
public policy discourse since 2008 and the position of the Ministry of Social Affairs on labour
market flexibility, raising self-employment, increasing exposure to precariousness in the
several sectors, on-going discussions and legislative approaches in the temporary agency
sector (pay-rolling and “contracting to work”), and other relevant materials.
New knowledge and added value
In the Netherlands labour market flexibility and the quality of employment are high
on the political agenda. Employers often underline the need for further flexibilisation
because of competitive pressures but also recognize the need to limit the social impact
of such flexibilisation. The trade unions speak of “exaggerated flexibilisation” and
want to reduce it, although they recognize that competitive pressures exist and have to
be dealt with. The current liberal-social democratic government has also been
struggling with this tension between a demand for flexibility for employers as well as
for security for workers. This issue was one of the main subjects of the Social Pact
concluded between the government, the employers and the unions in the Netherlands
in April 2013. The Pact identifies the urgent need to improve the rights and protection
of persons with a flexible employment relation and to combat all improper forms of
flexible work, including bogus self-employment, the evasion of social contributions
or minimum wages or the non-observance of collective agreements. It also argues that
increasingly there is a dubious use of flexible types of employment relations to the
detriment of the workers who more and more one-sidedly carry the burden of
economic and labour market risks. It calls for a new balance between flexibility and
security, and to increase the capacity to adapt to new circumstances. A series of
legislative, institutional and policy reforms have been the result of the Pact. The social
partners are still debating the right way to translate the Pact into collective agreements
and other social partners’ policies and activities. Moreover, there are major
differences between the sectors of the economy, with both the extent and the type of
flexibilisation varying substantially.
In this report we discuss the problems and challenges social partners face concerning
flexibilisation, the quality of employment and precariousness in four sectors of the
economy: construction, hospitals, industrial cleaning and the temporary agency work
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sector. We examine also the types of precarious work that exist in the four sectors, the
origins of these types of work and their effects, as well as the respective opinions and
strategies of employers and trade unions in the sector. Moreover, we show to what
extent there is cooperation or conflict over precarious work and what types of
solutions the two sides propose and implement.
Sectors Overview and Labour Market Developments
Construction
The construction industry has experienced both long-term and short-term changes that
affect the incidence and types of flexible work in the sector. In a longer term
perspective, the construction sector has been experiencing a number of structural
changes that have had an effect on the use of flexible contracts and arrangements in
the sector. One is the mergers between or take-overs of (large) construction
companies, leading to the emergence of a small segment of very large companies.
Another is the internationalization of the sector, including augmented international
competition as a result of the European tender rules (projects of a certain size have to
be tendered EU-wide) as well as increased migration and posting of workers from
abroad in the Netherlands. A third is the pervasive growth of subcontracting in the
sector, leading to the prevalence of complex (international) subcontracting chains and
the involvement of large numbers of (often smaller) companies in construction
projects. Fourth, the share of self-employed in total employment in the sector has
been steadily rising over the years.
In the short term, the construction sector is one of the sectors most affected by the
current economic crisis. Since the start of the crisis in 2008, the number of
construction projects has declined strongly, among others because of austerity
measures affecting the relevant public budgets, resulting in the loss of some 6070,000 construction jobs, equivalent to some 20 percent of the total jobs in the sector.
These developments have resulted in a construction sector where a relatively small
number of (very) large companies co-exist with a large number of small and mediumsized companies and numerous self-employed. Companies constantly try to deal with
cost pressures and demand uncertainty and often attempt to shift (part of) the
respective risks onto subcontractors, self-employed, employees or temporary agency
workers.
The changes in the construction sector have first of all resulted in a decline of
traditional open-ended contracts. This decline was obviously strongest in the crisis
years but has been ongoing for much longer. Open-ended contracts have largely been
substituted by self-employed without personnel, making up close to 20 percent of all
employment in the sector, much above the national average. The various types of
flexible contracts are used less than in the rest of the economy, with the exception of
temporary agency work.
Industrial Cleaning
The industrial cleaning sector is characterized by three-party labour and services
relationships, where the cleaning companies compete in a highly competitive market
of services provided to user companies. The price of labour is under a constant
pressure due to this competitiveness. Over the past decade the trade unions have
organized three major collective actions in the form of long strikes up to nine weeks
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(2010, 2012 and 2014), in order to improve the conditions of labour of the workers.
These strikes were not merely or solely directed against the cleaning companies as the
employers of the workers, but also at the user companies. The more or less explicit
notion that supported that strategy was that the user companies are as much or more
responsible for the price of labour in the sector.
After a few years of decline that coincided with the crisis but was also caused by
developments in work patterns (a diminishing demand of office space), the growth in
the sector in 2012 was mildly positive, amounting to 1.1%. Notwithstanding this
slight growth, the sector is regarded as a saturated market with little growth
opportunities.
Declining budgets for cleaning at the user companies led to sharpened competition on
the price of cleaning contracts and to shorter user contracts than before. The effect of
this development has been pressure on the price of labour, worsening conditions of
labour for workers, and reduction on the time allowed to perform the actual cleaning
work according to professional standards. Cleaning has over the past decades been
almost completely outsourced by user companies and public institutions.
Cleaning work can generally be regarded as low-skilled work. Many workers have
received no education beyond primary school and low literacy is common. In the
working population we find a relatively high number of immigrants on the one hand
(46% as compared to 19% in the general working population), and of female workers
(both immigrant and Dutch nationality) on the other (70% as compared to 49,7% in
the general working population).
The industrial cleaning sector is dynamic in the sense that the in- and outflow is 22.2
% per 6 months. An important characteristic of the sector is the number of part-time
employment contracts, the average working time is 0.5. Many workers work two or
more part-time jobs, the average job is 23 hours per week. Compared to the general
working population the workforce in this sector is relatively old and the share of
elderly workers is increasing. The outflow to unemployment is much higher than in
other sectors.
Temporary Agency Work
Although it has only represented a few per cent of the labour market over the last
decades, the Dutch temp-agency sector is a well-established and fully accepted part of
the Dutch labour market.
The financial crisis has had an enormous impact on the sector and has caused the
foreclosure of a large number of temp-agencies, impacting the way staffing
consultants work by turning the focus around from primarily finding and retaining
temp-agency workers to actively searching for vacancies and maintaining contracts
with employers. Looking for new opportunities, temp-agencies are diversifying their
services, for instance by specifically aiming at low skilled work or providing services
like language training and online vocational education to employees with less than
average labour market opportunities, with the help of the TAW-sectors’ education
fund STOOF. Another example of this diversification is the extension of the steppingstone function by providing services to the public sector as partners in the reintegration of welfare recipients back onto the labour market.
A large problem within the Dutch temp-agency sector is illegal temp-agencies,
especially now that cross-border posting of workers has been made easier within the
European Union. Illegal temp-agencies have proliferated with the abolition of the
licensing scheme, resulting in a large number of new and closing temp-agencies each
year which do not respect the rights of employees and oftentimes even exploit them.
Especially those illegal temp-agencies that aim for vulnerable groups of workers like
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immigrants. This is a common concern by trade unions and employer representatives.
The Dutch Ministry of Social affairs has also recognized the urgency of this problem
and is looking into ways to remedy it.
One of the measures the regular employers have taken, is to brand themselves as
‘good flex’ and by asking businesses to only use the services of recognized tempagencies. The major employers’ organisation in the sector, ABU, would like all
temp-agencies to be ‘good flex’ i.e. abide by the law and follow the collective
agreement. Although the temp-agency sector has already organized a licensing
scheme within the sector and created the Foundation for Labour Standards (SNA) to
administer NEN 4400 certificates, a prerequisite for an ABU-membership, this is not
mandatory within the sector. The Ministry of Social Affairs does already require all
labour market intermediaries to register as such with the Dutch Chamber of
Commerce since July 1st 2012, and it is considering to establish a renewed mandatory
licensing scheme to tackle this problem.
The Law on Flexibility and Security (Wet Flexibiliteit en Zekerheid) was introduced
in 1999, based on a proposal by the social partners united in the Stichting van de
Arbeid (Labour Foundation). The law aimed at introducing more flexibility and
security in the Dutch labour market, among others by strengthening the position of
temporary agency workers while in effect institutionalizing flexible labour contracts
and placing them firmly within the Dutch system of collective agreements. Several
provisions within this law has been adapted by the sector collective agreement
(declared binding for the whole sector by the Ministry of Social Affairs).
A division within the temp-agency work sector is taking place in recent years: next to
standard temp-agency contracts new forms of flexible employment called pay-rolling
and “contracting” are flourishing. Pay-rolling is a cheaper and more flexible form of
hiring temporary labour, its defining difference with regular temp-agency work is that
pay-rolling companies do not search, match or select new employees but only legally
employ them, conveniently freeing employers of some of the responsibilities that are
usually bestowed upon them by the law and by the collective agreement of their
sector. Besides, “contracting” or ‘contract for work’ between user-company and
temp-agency is an employment construction that places the employee outside the
realm of the collective agreement of their specific sector, but also outside the scope of
the temp-agency collective agreement, offering even less job security and secondary
rights. The main difference between temp-agency work and contracting is that the
temp-agency does not provide workers but provides work. While regular temp-agency
workers are placed at the user-company and receive work instructions from the user
company, in the case of contracting these instructions come from a temp-agency
manager who runs a whole production-line or sub-department within the usercompany. The unions are not satisfied with the emerge of this new flexible forms of
employment, especially with the fact that temp-agencies can avoid the TAW
collective agreement through a contracting scheme and they would rather have them
banned.
Hospitals
The Dutch healthcare sector is one of the largest sectors of the Dutch economy,
representing more than 15% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2012. The
hospitals sector in the Netherlands is facing significant challenges: the average age of
the general population is rising at a steady pace, the average age of the healthcare
professionals is increasing, dramatically increasing healthcare expenditures and
evolving working conditions within the sector.
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The reform of the Dutch public sector over the last few decades has shown increased
attention for accountability and performance management. This has also been
extended to the hospital sector. The government is following austerity measures, to
control the growing healthcare costs: a ‘pay-for-performance’ system was introduced
in 2005 through an intricate system of Diagnose Treatment Combinations (DBC) and
in 2006, a new Health Insurance Act was introduced in an effort to initiate market
competition between healthcare insurers.
With the focus on cost containment the Dutch government has chosen to curb
expenditures by introducing market mechanisms, putting the sector under increased
pressure. Hospitals are displaying a growing focus on efficiency and transparency in
order to manage professional autonomy and regulate costs. Over the last decades this
has led to new (technological) innovation, increased cost-awareness and higher
productivity. But it has also increased the work pressure and hospital employees are
increasingly being regarded as the most costly factor burdening the budget of the
organization.
The Dutch healthcare sector employs over 10% of all Dutch employees and about
21% of these employees work for a general hospital. On average Dutch hospital
employees work 0.6 FTE and more than 80 per cent are women. Within the Dutch
context migration of labour has never been very prominent, possibly due to the
language barrier, although there are Dutch recruitment agencies working in several
EU countries, preparing themselves for labour shortages in the future.
Despite the financial crisis the number of open-ended contracts in the Dutch
healthcare sector has been rising (with the exception of young workers entering the
labour market after completing their education) and unlike most other sectors in The
Netherlands, self-employment in the hospital sector might even be declining.
Conclusions and Policy Lessons
Construction
In the Netherlands, the construction sector has been subject to a series of longer term
changes, including the emergence of very large companies, internationalization,
pervasive subcontracting, pressure for cost reduction by third parties (those tendering
the major construction projects) and the growth of the share of self-employed. It is
also one of the sectors that most suffered from the current crisis, as shown by the
enormous decline in employment in the sector. This has caused longer-term tensions
and differences of interests and opinion between unions and employers in the sector to
come to the fore even stronger than before the crisis. At the moment employers and
unions are quite strongly in disagreement with each other concerning the type of jobs,
contracts and working conditions which should be pursued in the sector. The
employers argue that competitive pressures call for further flexibilisation and cost
reduction as well as a drastic rethinking of the collective agreement, deemed to be too
costly, rigid and over-regulating the sector. The unions argue for clear limits to
flexibilisation, more secure jobs and an emphasis on quality instead of an endless
series of cost reduction measures. The extent of the disagreement is shown, among
other things, by the failure to sign genuinely new collective agreements in the past
two years. In the meantime the quality of employment in the sector is under serious
strain, further exacerbated by the constant uncertainty about the continuity of jobs and
opportunities for the self-employed.
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At the same time, unions and employers do agree on one issue, i.e. the expectation
that the sector will return to a growth path in the coming years. They have
collaborated in several initiatives such as the joint establishment of a Compliance
Bureau that monitors compliance with labour and health and safety laws in the sector,
as well as the rules of the collective agreement and mediates between employers and
employees in case of a conflict or dispute. Similarly, the unions and the employers’
associations have been discussing the introduction of an identity card for construction
sites. Such a card should regulate the entrance to construction sites and provide all the
necessary information on all persons on the building site, including their social
security status, employment status, educational background, etc. This would allow the
social partners as well as public bodies like the labour inspectorate and tax inspection
to control compliance with the rules. Finally, they have also managed to conceive
common causes related to the retention of skilled employees and the guaranteeing of
good quality labour supply to respond to the expected growth by developing a sector
plan for the period 2013-2015. It would be a step forward for labour relations in the
sector, if they manage to use this common ground to come to a renewed consensus on
the broader questions related to the quality of employment and the governance of the
sector.
Cleaning
In the industrial cleaning sector a shift has occurred in the collective labour agreement
(the main regulatory instrument for the sector) from merely the primary conditions of
labour, i.e. wages, working time etc., to the development of a wider set of
arrangements such as pension schemes. The sector has established a joint organization
called RAS that organizes training and educational programs, including language,
organizational and trade union skills. The aim of this initiative is to further increase
the higher quality part and to make the sector a better place to work.
Both sides agree that the three long strikes that took place over the last decade were
caused by the fact that the outsourcing of cleaning activities has led to a highly
competitive market in which employers felt forced to pressure their employees into
using less and less time to do more work. Competition was seriously affecting the
working conditions at the sector. The collective actions and strikes were therefore
firstly about the wages and working time, but also about the working conditions in the
sector. Due to the negative image of the sector and the public support during the
collective actions, the employers felt the need to improve this situation by introducing
the OSB certification scheme to tackle the deterioration of employment
conditions in this sector. This scheme contains a code of conduct addressing not
just employers and workers, but also the user companies. In the shadow of the
OSB Code, new and more positive concepts started to develop that allow workers to
develop a personal career plan in the industry or to strengthen trade union
involvement. The first instrument that is used for this purpose is the collective
agreement, that serves also as a framework for specific regulations for the
implementation of language and training programmes and the supporting financial
arrangements.
Moreover, the collective agreement for this sector contains provisions that guarantee
that in case of a contract shift after a procurement procedure with a user company,
from one to the next cleaning company, part of the workers and their conditions of
employment follow the work. Bearing similarities with the legal EU doctrine on
protection of worker’s rights in the event of a transfer of undertaking, the workers at
the workplace of the user company will then become part of the cleaning company
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that has secured the contract. This practice has been endorsed as possible best practice
by the current government, that investigates whether it can serve as a model for other
labour intensive sectors characterised by a lot of contract shifts.
Finally, a specific sector plan drawn up by the parties to the collective agreement has
been accepted for co-financed public funding.
The representatives of both side of the industry agree that the success of the current
joint actions are conditional to their proper implementation. The most important
condition is that companies need to develop firm HRM tools, including ITC, that will
allow the intentions of improving working conditions to materialize. In particular, the
connection with the other sectors and activities like security and catering, will only
become effective when all the companies covered will proactively take this up and
promote it. A key factor for the effective implementation of the Code is the inclusion
of the user companies which are only morally bound to the agreement.
The cleaning collective agreement is one of the agreements that contains provisions
that aim to remedy a worsening of employment conditions when a cleaning contract is
shifted from one to another company. It is acknowledged that this private law
construction required a legal incentive in order to be successful, and it remains at this
moment unclear how this will be guaranteed. Both sides of industry acknowledge this
fact and agree that it will only become effective if both commit strongly to the
common plans. In order to monitor and steer this process, and to prevent a fourth
strike action a couple of years from now, a specific ‘agenda of trust’ has been drafted.
The idea is that the wave-like motion of the last decade will be replaced by a more
constructive continuing cooperation.
Temporary Agency Work
Temporary work agencies are now an integral part of the Dutch labour market.
During the last decades of the twentieth century most restrictions were lifted and the
licensing-scheme was abolished. At the turn of the century, the social partners saw
temp-agencies as a valuable stepping-stone towards a permanent contract. Since then
labour market flexibility has become an important topic within Dutch public
discourse, even more so since the beginning of the financial crisis, and the number of
open-ended contracts has decreased. Indeed, the stepping-stone function of the sector
less and less concerns a trajectory towards an open-ended contract and more and more
concerns a (temporary) way out of joblessness.
With the proliferation of Internet during the last two decades, online matching and
profiling has become very popular. This used to be the key competence of tempagencies, so they started looking at new services, public-private partnerships and way
to use their unique position within the labour market to negotiate new contracts. It has
become far more easy to start a temp-agency, but without the need for a formal
license illegal temp-agencies have become one of the main concerns for the social
partners within the sector. Since the European Union has made the cross-border
posting of workers much easier, international competition has intensified which is
also making the prosecution of illegal temping-activities violating workers’ rights
more difficult. This is something the Ministry of Social Affairs is looking at closely,
because cross-border posting is also posing a challenge for the investigation of illegal
temp-agencies. The unions are in favour of more European legislation and an update
of the posting-of-workers directive. The employers’ associations are satisfied with the
directive and do not see the need for new European legislation at this point in time.
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The social partners in the TAW-sector do work together to combat malpractices,
through the Foundation for Labour Standards (SNA) which administers NEN 4400
certificates, a prerequisite for ABU-membership. In 1998 the ABU established the
Financial Testing Foundation (SFT) to ensure that all ABU members pay their social
insurance premiums. In a joint effort between all social partners the Social Fund for
the Temporary Agency Work Sector (SFU) was created in 2007, which collects 0,2%
of all wages paid in the sector and administers this money to the sectors’ schooling
fund STOOF, the working conditions fund STAF and the collective agreement
compliance fund SNCU (“CLA police”) of the TAW-sector. Also the Ministry of
Social Affairs has a special labour inspection team for the temp-agency sector.
During the financial crisis a lot of temp-agencies went bankrupt and competition
increased, shifting the power balance within the employment-triangle further towards
the user companies, which press for further flexibilisation and cost reduction. With
the introduction of pay-rolling, Dutch temp-agencies offered a novel service which
does not require their matching expertise. With contracting temp-agencies do not
provide workers but provide work under their own supervision, yet another step away
from their original vocation and signalling how much the sector is changing.
The two new forms of precarious labour in the sector, pay-rolling and contracting, are
currently posing a challenge for the collective bargaining process. The unions find
themselves reluctant to sign a new collective agreement for the TAW-sector because
the collective agreement is then used by employers to increase flexibility, while at the
same time they undermine the collective agreement by promoting especially
contracting. Trade unions see that flexibility and cost pressure increase while the
share of employees working on a temp-agency contract has only decreased over the
last few years, as more and more employees are working through the new alternative
employment regimes. Hence, there is a debate within the unions if the best strategy is
to continue negotiating a specific agreement for the temp agency sector or if they
should attempt to regulate temp agency work in the regular sector agreements
covering the traditional sectors.
Hospitals
The social dialogue within the sector has been very constructive over the last ten
years, the unions work closely together and the bargaining process has been relatively
harmonious, the social partners within the hospital sector have not been in a major
conflict for over a decade.
The hospital collective agreement is one of the most influential collective agreements
in the Netherlands. Wages make up roughly 60% of all expenses of an average Dutch
hospital. Together with the current austerity measures this is putting the collective
agreement negotiations under increased pressure. The public general hospitals have to
negotiate their yearly medical treatment fees with the healthcare insurance companies,
which have the power to favour certain healthcare providers based on quality and cost
effectiveness. The unions are collectively asking for a wage increase of 3 per cent,
which is something the hospitals are not eager to agree upon. Negotiations for a new
collective agreement have not yet resulted in an understanding. Also a separate oneyear collective agreement between the private healthcare sector and a small union
called Alternative for Union (AVV) is putting pressure on the negotiations. The
unions are aiming for general applicability of the public hospital collective agreement
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through an extension by the Ministry of Social Affairs, which is a common practice.
The public collective agreement will then be declared applicable for all private
healthcare providers that earn more than 50% of their healthcare activities from
insurance-paid provisions, making void what was negotiated in the private collective
agreement.
The Dutch hospital sector has witnessed a tumultuous period over the last few
decades. Hospitals are becoming more complex with more complicated treatments,
higher standards, more protocols, more elaborate technological equipment, etc. In
addition, there is a strong cost pressure in the sector, following austerity measures by
the government, more emphasis on ‘pay-for-performance’ and attempts to strengthen
market competition between healthcare insurers, who again put more pressure on
hospitals to be cost effective. These developments have not made the work of hospital
employees lighter but have increased work pressure; and where the hospitals argue for
wage moderation the unions are claiming wage increases are required. This has put
the traditionally cooperative industrial relations in the sector under some strain.
Comparatively, the hospital sector seems less affected by precarious work than the
other sectors discussed in this report. In particular, low wages seem less prevalent,
there is a lower incidence of flexible contracts and external flexibility is less of an
issue. Flexibility is to a larger extent achieved by internal mechanisms. A lot of
flexibility is expected from nurses, in particular working time flexibility. It is rather
this working time flexibility and shift work that affect the quality of work in the
sector. Also, recent developments in the sector have led to a debate concerning
external flexibility. On the one hand, 0 hour contracts are banned but on the other
hand hospitals are increasing the external flexibility by offering temporary contracts.
The unions see such flexibility as a useful tool to eliminate waiting lists or to replace
nurses temporarily absent due to illness or maternity leave. However, they also claim
that further development of external labour flexibility constitutes a possible threat to
the existing system of work in the hospitals. In particular, it does not fit well with
working in well-functioning and internally adaptable teams that require close
cooperation, routines and trust between the members.
A crucial challenge for the future of the sector is education and training. There is an
increasing demand for highly educated nurses following from the rising complexity of
work in the sector. But the ageing of the workforce also creates an increasing general
demand for labour for the near future, at all educational levels. The sector aims to
offer more internship places and training courses but for the moment efforts are
insufficient and a shortage of qualified nurses may well become reality in the coming
years. This will require the sector to be sufficiently attractive to attract and retain
nurses, and the work to adapt to the demographic changes in the sector, in particular
finding a balance between work pressure and an ageing workforce. Balancing these
unavoidable demands with the pressure for austerity and cost effectiveness seems to
be the biggest challenge for the social partners in the coming years. Continuous
austerity pressures may well make it impossible to maintain the necessary size and
quality of the workforce and hence to keep up high quality and accessible healthcare.
Cross-sector Policy Implications
Statistics indicate that in the Netherlands flexible, insecure and low quality jobs are
on the increase. In line with this development, the Social Pact of 2013 underlines that
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labour market flexibility and the quality of employment remain high on the political
agenda and are a key issue in the national social dialogue. The four sector studies
presented in this report show that this is true also at the sectoral level. However, each
sector presents its own specific version of this problematique, which is defined by
sector-specific developments concerning the types of work, the present and future
demand for different types of labour, pressures for cost-containment, competition,
demographic development, the characteristics of sectoral industrial relations, etc.
All four sectors are trying to deal with pressures to reduce costs and increase
flexibility. These pressures emerge on the one hand from competition between
companies or organisations for clients. However, such competition is also reinforced
and channelled in certain directions by third parties that directly or indirectly exercise
heavy influence on the quality of employment in the sectors. In the cleaning sector the
large user companies demand constant reductions in the price of cleaning contracts,
creating strong pressure on the wages and working conditions of cleaners. Something
similar occurs in the temporary agency sector, having the additional effect that the
temporary agencies have been developing new ways of offering their services, in
particular pay-rolling and contracting, that create additional insecurities for the
employees. Also in the construction sector tendering procedures based largely on the
lowest costs create similar pressures, while lead companies in large projects transmit
such pressures downwards through their production chain, affecting above all smaller
subcontracted companies. In the hospital sector it is the budgetary policies of the
government and the purchasing policies of the insurance companies that perform a
similar function. More in general, national and EU policies increasing austerity,
international competition, posting of workers and migration foment these pressures.
In all sectors these pressures have resulted in growing problems with the quality of
work through increasing work pressure, growing insecurity and flexibility, low wages
or decreasing training opportunities. In the worst cases, especially in the construction
and TAW sectors, certain employers have been operation outside the law,
underpaying their employees, failing to pay social contributions, imposing excessive
insecurity or employing personnel under hazardous conditions.
All these issues are discussed between the employers and trade unions in the
respective sectors. In some cases this leads to consensual trade-offs between the
interests employers and workers, that are then cemented in collective agreements.
However, with the possible exception of the hospital sector, the differences of
interest, or the different interpretations of what the correct way is to deal with the
tensions between demands for cost containment and rising flexibility on the one hand
and decent work on the other hand, have led to serious tensions and conflicts in
industrial relations. Employers often argue that further flexibilisation and cost
reduction are inevitable to maintain competitiveness and secure jobs, while unions
argue that employers follow ‘low road’ instead of ‘high road’ competitive strategies,
that the employers shift the risk of entrepreneurial activities onto the shoulders of the
workers and that work is becoming less and less decent. Tensions are most apparent
in the cleaning sectors where in recent years a number of long lasting strikes took
place, something quite unusual in a country where strikes hardly occur. In the
construction sector tensions are manifested by the difficulties to conclude new
collective agreements in recent years and the radically different view of the two sides
on what should be the key achievements of the new agreement. In the TAW sector the
use of a collective agreement for the sector is increasingly being questioned by the
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trade unions as they see it more and more as an instrument for the employers to make
use of the flexibility-increasing possibilities provided by three-quarter mandatory
legislation, while at the same time they undermine the agreements with the unions by
developing alternatives like pay-rolling and contracting.
At the same time, the two sides have in all sectors found common causes as well. In
particular combatting illegality and unfair competition or securing the right type and
amount of labour supply are issues on which the two sides easily come together. This
is even more so when government support for sector agreements is available.
Still, it seems unlikely that the social partners in the various sectors will be able to
solve the tensions concerning flexibility, insecurity and quality of employment by
themselves in the near future. While they do play a crucial role in this respect there
are many factors outside their direct control that contribute to the growth of these
tensions. Here EU and national legislation and policies regulating integration,
competition, public finances, public procurement, migration and the quality of work
are of key importance. They shape the condition in which the sector social partners
operate. Without changes in this context that promote a better balance between the
interests of the two sides the sector social partners face a tough job in the coming
years to foster growth, competitiveness and social peace in their respective sectors.
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