Salary increase of 17 percent: port personnel benefit from the old benefit

It’s about the APC or Automatic Price Compensation. The inflation rate is calculated once or twice a year using a special formula. Wages will increase by the same amount.

He spent 31 hours at the negotiating table, including 19 uninterrupted hours just before Christmas. But FNV negotiator Asmae Hajjari got what she wanted: a 16.93% wage increase in 2023 for staff working at Hutchison Ports Delta II Rotterdam terminal (formerly known as APM Terminals).

Equal salary

“The company actually wanted to get rid of automatic price compensation. But for us it is not negotiable. A deal is a deal. The port has had purchasing power for many years. We make sure that the port staff can pay as much as possible. their wages as the year before.”

On 1 January 2024, personnel will also receive a one-off payment of one thousand euro. “And we made arrangements on other issues such as travel allowances, saving employees from a certain age with, for example, night shifts, moving forward to work.”

Hutchison Ports previously said there was no room for price offsetting. Subsequently, the company proposed increases of 9% in 2023 and 5% in 2024. It led to protests in the port with work being carried out more slowly than usual, causing delays at the terminal, where containers are loaded and unloaded from ships.

70’s

FNV negotiator Niek Stam has been at the negotiating table with port companies for over 20 years. He is known for his fanatical old-fashioned union mentality, in which he does not hesitate to organize strikes.

“Automatic price compensation dates back to the 1970s,” he explains. «At the time it was in the collective labor agreement of almost all sectors, even outside the port. But over the years it has disappeared almost everywhere in exchange for regular wage increases because inflation was very low. We always fought in the port to keep it. Many employees are unionized and we will stop working if necessary.”

Zestig Cao’s

FNV Havens is involved in around sixty collective labor agreements in the port of Rotterdam, which apply to eight thousand people. Wages will also increase by almost 17% in port companies, where no new collective labor agreement will come into effect in 2023. And this is much more than the national average (6.4%).

“Inflation was not that high in many companies in the port when the collective agreements were made. This year we have received several calls from companies that want to break the agreements. It is not negotiable, an agreement is an agreement,” says Hajjari.

Hutchison Ports and the other companies that will see an almost 17% increase were measured from October 2021 to October 2022. Inflation in the Netherlands according to the European Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) was then 16.8 %. reports CBS. In September it was even 17.1%. Inflation is now much lower again at 11.2%. in November.

FNV proposal

In 2021, FNV presented its annual working conditions agenda shortly before the Prinsjesdag. Among these, the proposal to return automatic price compensation to all collective labor agreements, including those outside the port.

Employers Association AWVN then informed not in favor of the plan. For example, expected inflation would also be included in the wage demand, would lead to rising product prices and thus inflation (wage-price spiral) and the employers’ club believes that “wage agreements in one sector or in a business they should always be seen as part of a much larger package.