New Collective Labour Agreement for universities: a story of cents and percents

“We’re pleased to have reached good collective labour agreements despite pressures of government cuts”, says Donald Pechler, director of the General Union of Education (AOb). Under the new agreement, pay will go up by 4.2 percent on average.

Some union members would prefer pay rises to be in ‘cents’ rather than ‘percent’. Giving everyone a monetary pay rise rather than a percentage pay rise would leave employees on a lower salary better off in relative terms.

“There will always be red lines in negotiations, but we’ve been able to satisfy the demands of those members”, says Pechler, alluding to the 100-euro uplift on monthly salaries and the one-off payment of 350 euro.

The negotiations were overshadowed by the caretaker government’s cuts to university funding, amounting to around 400 million euros. With various universities having announced layoffs,the negotiators needed to discuss how reorganisations would be handled. An ‘employability fund’ will be created for people being transferred to new roles. They will be supported in finding new work or funding for retraining. The fund, for which 45 million euros is reported to have been earmarked, will be in place until 2028 inclusive.

Other agreements relate to topics such as notice periods: in some cases, people who must leave their roles will be given more time to look for a new one. This is particularly crucial for international staff whose employment status may be a factor in their residence rights.

Vice President Margot van der Starre (Utrecht University) negotiated on behalf of Universities of the Netherlands, the employers’ association. In a statement, she said: “Universities are being gutted by the current government’s slashing cuts. This agreement proposes a sensible pay rise while guaranteeing proper support for employees in these challenging times.”

Workload and safety at work are other “contentious issues” (Pechler). The unions will conduct a joint analysis of these points, which are still rather vague, and apply for grants to develop leadership training and other programmes.

They also want to improve insights into ‘workload standards’, being the number of tasks a person is expected to complete in an hour. While this is officially a task of the employee participation body, an agreement has been reached that information will be shared more effectively.

For PhD candidates, an agreement has been reached capping the time spent on teaching to 20 percent of working hours. “We frequently receive complaints that PhD candidates spend too much time teaching. We’re now trying to put a stop to that”, says Pechler.

The unions are also embroiled in a lawsuit against the government. Each year, the government sends a letter to employees specifying their ‘margin for salary’, being the amount of money for pay rises.

The unions cannot see letters from the current year, although the court has granted access to correspondence from previous years. As this information concerns public funds, the unions believe it should be public and have therefore given notice of appeal.

The union members and university governors have two weeks to vote on the agreement.