Umcs stick to their interpretation of the collective agreement, at the expense of interns

A small group of students may still receive an internship allowance at the academic hospitals. But that is by no means certain, and the umcs continue to deny that they are circumventing the collective agreement.

Are university medical centres complying with the collective agreement? “I understand that students are angry”, wrote health minister Fleur Agema to the House of Representatives last Tuesday, but she will definitely not intervene. The collective agreement is a matter for employers and trade unions, she says.

Note that this is not about medical interns, who have their own allowance included in the collective agreement. But since last year, ‘ordinary’ interns at academic hospitals have also been entitled to an allowance. They can expect just over four hundred euros per month. This agreement is binding for the seven university medical centres in the Netherlands, but there is one exception: students from ‘internal’ programmes receive nothing.

Not clear

Umcs claim, however, that all students from all medical faculties in the Netherlands are ‘internal’, it emerged last month, meaning that none of them receive an allowance. Even a Utrecht student of biomedical sciences doing an internship at the umc in Leiden or Nijmegen is therefore considered ‘internal’ and receives no money.

At trade union FNV they had not fully grasped this, negotiator Elise Martijn now admits. A week and a half ago she spoke with employers about, among other things, internship allowances. But at that time she did not discuss this interpretation by the umcs.

“Perhaps we were naïve in assuming that an Amsterdam student would also do an internship in Amsterdam. While of course they can also go to Utrecht”, says Martijn. In her view, this interpretation of the collective agreement by the umcs is incorrect. She hopes that student union members without an allowance will contact FNV to make a case of it.

Allowance after all

According to Martijn, other students have benefited from the union consultations: those who are not studying medicine. “At first it looked as though almost all university students were excluded. But that has now been clarified.” Martijn mentions students from programmes such as economics or law, who should now be entitled to an internship allowance.

Healthcare union NU’91 also believes that more students will receive an allowance from now on, while fellow union FBZ says when asked that this is not yet certain. This latter union has many academically trained doctors among its members.

The Netherlands Federation of University Medical Centres, NFU, has not changed its interpretation of the collective agreement. “There was no reason to say that our interpretation was wrong”, a spokesperson says after the union consultations. According to him, the umcs have promised to explain more clearly to students “what we mean by internal and external programmes”.