The average pay rise in the 59 collective labour agreements agreed to date is 2.16%, above the inflation rate but considerably lower than the 3% demanded by the main trade unions, reports today’s Financieele Dagblad.

The figure has been calculated by the employers’ organisation AWVN and covers some 640,000 workers. But the FNV trade union federation challenges the AWVN’s calculation and said most larger concerns are agreeing to a pay rise of 2.8%. The government statistics office CBS puts inflation at 1.25% this year.
According to the AWVN, employers and unions are increasingly willing to make agreements on flexible working hours, and flexible salaries are also winning ground. Profit-sharing or salaries based on results have been agreed in almost half of the collective labour accords (CAOs), said the AWVN.
This pushes up the real level of pay rises above 2.16% but, said Hans van der Steen of the AWVN, this is not an issue . ‘We don’t have a problem paying employees more if profits are rising, because if the economy deteriorates again, these costs disappear too,’ Van der Steen told the FD.