Netherlands: postal businesses promise to hire 80% of their current daily mailmen

An agreement in principle was reached in the postal sector on April 1st: Selekt Mail, Sandd and VSP Netwerk, the delivery subsidiary of TNT Post (the former public post) agreed to hire, with a contract, 80% of their employees, and to give minimum wage to their workers, currently paid by the letter as daily workers.  In addition, unions secured that mailmen would no longer be forced to work in locations far away from their place of residence.  Employers will have to pay a fine to a special fund if they do not keep their promise to employ their current temporary staff. Egon Groen, representatives for the Federation of Netherlands Unions (FNV) thinks that this agreement is satisfactory for the 10,000 mailmen still working in the country, where mail volume has been dropping by 4% each year since email spread.  For two years, postal businesses have been engaged in a trial of strength with unions and the government.  In September 2009, the latter issued an ordinance, which Sandd and Selekt Mail contested in court, in vain, forcing these businesses to hire 80% of their workforce by the end of 2012 and to pay them statutory minimum wage.  The Ministry of Finance gave postal businesses until January 1, 2011 to stop their social dumping practices and comply with labor law.  Then, the deadline was extended to April 1dt and the implementation of these long-awaited measures should take place by the end of 2012.  Ruud Vreeman, former mayor of Tilburg and appointed by the government to solve the postal conflict, proposed in January the introduction of a special fund which helped with the negotiations (see our dispatch No.  110039).  This fund will be used to collect the fines – the amount of which has yet to be determined – to facilitate the recruitment of workers on a contractual basis.