Thousands of bus drivers, drivers and conductors will stop working on Thursday and Friday. The trade union FNV reports this after a collective bargaining agreement in which the unions and employers could not reach an agreement. Only in NS trains and in urban transport in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague will there be no strikes.
The strike means that there will be virtually no buses or regional trains from companies other than NS on Thursday and Friday. The collective regional transport covers 13,000 employees and thousands of them are members of the union.
The Association of Public Transport Employers (VWOV) sat late into the night at the table with the FNV. According to the VWOV, the unions have broken off the talks despite an “above-average wage offer” of 8 percent. FNV director Marijn van der Gaag disputes that, saying that the parties simply ended up in an impasse.
The discussion would still be about that wage increase. In addition, there would be disagreement about the duration of a new collective labor agreement and the measures to reduce the workload in regional transport.
In September and October, strikers also shut down regional transport, spread across the country. There was actually supposed to be another four-day nationwide strike series in the autumn, but it was called off when collective bargaining with the VWOV was resumed.
NS employees have their own collective labor agreement, just like the staff of urban transport in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague. That’s why they don’t participate.
