The NS and the labor unions are at odds again. After 4.5 months of negotiations, they have not yet agreed on a new collective labor agreement. The railway company is standing firm with a wage offer of 2.55 percent. As a reaction, the staff is halting train traffic today.
And it doesn’t stop there. Regional actions will also follow next week on Tuesday, Thursday, and Monday, June 16. It is not yet known whether trains will run then.
The NS has decided to stop all trains on Friday, as the strike is taking place in the Central Netherlands region. This includes Utrecht, the most important hub for railway traffic.
“We regret that travelers are affected by this. As far as we are concerned, we have not finished negotiating and would like to talk again. We remain ready at any moment to continue discussions with unions and conclude a new collective labor agreement,” says the NS.
Union FNV reports that the willingness to take action is great. “More than 90 percent of the members have indicated that they want to take action. We have been negotiating for months, and the NS is ignoring the ultimatum of its own employees. That says it all,” says director Henri Janssen to NU.nl.
The FNV demands a substantial wage increase for 17,500 NS employees, as the staff has still not been compensated for the sky-high inflation.
It is not the first time that the NS and the unions are on a collision course. The parties were also at odds during the previous collective labor agreement negotiations. “The NS has a tradition when it comes to strikes,” says collective labor agreement expert Henk Strating. “There are relatively more strikes at the NS.”
According to Strating, unions resort to the strike weapon because it has an effect on a company like the NS. “You don’t need many strikers; only a few employees need to stop working, and the country is paralyzed. Furthermore, it is a company with many long-term employment contracts. That means that there are employees who, for example, have experienced a strike twice before. And if you have seen that it works, you are more willing to strike again.”
In the area of wages, the most important topic at the collective labor agreement table, the NS has not handled it well, according to Strating. The company is making an offer for a wage increase for 27 months up to and including June 2027. Strating: “Employees receive an average of 2.55 percent per year in that offer. It would have been much wiser to come up with a higher wage offer over a shorter period. Especially given the high inflation and wage development.”