Unions are aiming for a 6 percent salary increase for higher professional education staff

Text Karen Hagen – Education Magazine Editorial –

April 24, 2024
– 2 Minutes to read

This morning, the collective labor agreement negotiators exchanged commitments with the Association of Universities of Applied Sciences (VH), which represents employers. “We want to be done with the negotiations before the summer,” says AOb director Douwe van der Zweep. “But then parties must limit themselves a bit in the number of topics.” We are stronger at the negotiating table with more members. Together we achieve more! Join the AOb

He wants to continue to focus on the salary. “Salaries have made significant progress in the previous collective labor agreement round, but we are certainly not there yet. A wage increase is important to maintain purchasing power.” The unions hope to make agreements in this negotiation process to prevent loss of purchasing power by including an agreement in the collective labor agreement that there will be automatic price compensation when prices rise.

In the previous collective labor agreement round, significant progress was made in terms of salaries, but we are certainly not there yet

In addition to the wage increase, the unions want the wage structure to be scrutinized. “Maintenance is needed there,” says the AOb director. “During the elaboration of the previous collective labor agreement and discussions with members, we noticed that there is still work to be done on this point.”

Workload

Reducing the workload is another point that the unions want to work on. They see that there is still too much unpaid overtime, because many tasks are not included in the job assignment. Van der Zweep: “We made agreements about realistic task assignments in the previous collective labor agreement. The task assignment has also been made verifiable by a committee. We want these agreements to now also work in practice, because that is still lacking. We want to do this, among other things, through a strict national monitor and a permanent place in the annual appraisals.”

The unions want the scheduling of employees to be as continuous as possible

The unions also believe that the scheduling of employees should be as continuous as possible. This does not always happen yet and that is why the unions want to introduce a table that shows how many days and half-days are allowed per working time factor. Furthermore, employees must be able to switch off their work telephone outside working hours.

Union Month

Just as at universities, negotiators want an agreement in higher professional education to reimburse part of the union dues at the start of the academic year. Colleagues who join a trade union in October, ‘the month of the trade union’, will receive half of their first annual contribution back from their employer. “It concerns a maximum of 100 euros per employee,” says Van der Zweep.

Remaining appointments

In addition to these points, the unions want agreements to be made about a socially safe working environment for everyone. The advice of the Hamer committee must be taken into account in this. The unions also want participation councils to have more time for training and mutual consultation.
Download the collective labor agreement of the unions and the Association of Universities of Applied Sciences Collective labor agreement commitment for joint unions for collective labor agreement 2024-2025
Employers’ collective labor agreement for the Association of Universities of Applied Sciences for the 2024-2025 collective labor agreement