In September, employees of Dutch universities will get a salary increase of 3.7 percent and a one-off payment of 300 euros. In January, salaries will be increased by another one percent. The new collective labor agreement also pays attention to social safety: the position of the ombudsperson will be reinforced.

In spite of the cutbacks announced by the new government and declining student numbers, the universities want to keep defending the interests of their employees. “With this responsible salary agreement, employers and unions send the signal that they wish to work together to address the problems facing our sector.”

Inflation

The education and research chapter of the Dutch Federation of Trade Unions (FNV) is satisfied with the negotiation agreement as well. “After the considerable salary increase in the current collective agreement, we’ve more than compensated the inflation of recent years with this salary increase”, says administrator Bernard Koekoek.

As the salary structure will be revised until and including scale 7, he expects a teaching assistant or receptionist can expect a salary increase of up to 200 euros.

Unwillingness

It was only last week that the FNV accused university administrators of administrative unwillingness because they were taking too few steps in improving social safety at universities. One week later, the air seems to have cleared.

The new draft agreement says that there will be one central reporting point for social safety at every university. Radboud University announced in December last year that it wanted to set up such a reporting point. Confidentiality provisions can also no longer be used to forbid employees to report transgressive behaviour.

On top of this, the position of the ombudsperson will be reinforced. In Nijmegen, ombudsman Nancy Viellevoye resigned this year because she said she could not do enough for university employees.

Workload

Furthermore, agreements have been made to tackle the high workload. Amongst other things, these are on scheduling breaks and on a realistic job scope for teachers. Particularly part-timers currently tend to work too many hours.

The negotiation agreement still needs to be approved by the support base of the unions and the separate universities. The term of the new collective agreement is 1 July 2024 through 30 June 2025.

Translation: Taalcentrum-VU