Source: Service Management
SME trade association Schoonmaken is een Vak (SieV) has declined the honour of being declarer for fellow trade association Schoonmakend Nederland. But it has published a white paper but its positions for the upcoming collective bargaining negotiations. For example, SieV wants wages to rise in line with the CBS index, calls the end-of-year bonus almost a 13th month and wants to amend Article 38.
SieV represents over 8 per cent of employees in the industry,” the industry association writes. “SieV has a clear vision and wants to act as a platform for SMEs with this writing send a clear signal as to what our members consider important. As far as we are concerned, the collective labour agreement for the cleaning industry is definitely in need of modernisation. The existing negotiators did attempt this during the previous collective labour agreement, but in practice this only resulted in more obligations for employers and none for employees. Take, for instance, articles 40 and 41 on a more mature working relationship where each has to take responsibility. The content of those articles amounts to the employer having to take even more responsibility.”
CBA works to the disadvantage of SMEs
SieV feels that the current collective agreement and previous editions are (partly) focused on large cleaning companies. “This works and/or may work to the disadvantage of SMEs and the vast majority of even smaller companies such as self-employed workers and companies with fewer than 10 employees.” The industry association comes up with examples. “An employee is scheduled at 6 am, but is already at work 15 minutes earlier. In practice, this employee will not wait 15 minutes before starting. But that 15 minutes does fall within the night allowance according to the collective agreement. Should she therefore have to stay on for 15 minutes?” Another example: “An employee would like to carry out Friday night's work on Saturday morning. Because that suits him/her better. It doesn't matter to the client, but the collective agreement says ’allowance’.
Practical feasibility
SieV believes that the articles in the CAO should take a close look at what the administrative burden is and the practical feasibility. “Because if a rule from the CAO is complex and requires extra administrative extra actions, such a rule is often unclear and difficult to check even for a cleaning employee. An SME already has more than enough administrative burden from the government; as an industry, let's not increase this extra but rather try to limit it.”
CBA contains contradictions
According to SieV, the current collective agreement contains a number of things that are contrary to European law in terms of rules and legislation, has discriminatory provisions or is inhibitory. On article 7 on the content of the employment contract, the association writes: “The last enumeration in this article indicates that “the region and object where the employee is working at the start of the employment contract” should be described.” SieV suggests reporting the region but not exactly all the objects where the employee will be working. Especially for employees working on multiple objects, this is more convenient."
Legally unnecessary
On article 8 that deals with changes during the employment contract, SieV says: “A very rigidly framed article that is out of date. The current CLA states that the employer should have a ‘compelling interest’ in making adjustments to working hours, work or the object. Legally, this is not necessary! In fact, these are (simple) individual changes that an employee should accept from the point of view of good employee conduct.” Article 11 on working hours is also under fire. “Suppose the employee forgets to report that, in addition to his full-time job at one company, he also works 20 hours in the evening at another cleaning company. Unfortunately, this is still a regular occurrence and so far there is no active control from the Tax Administration on the violation of the ATW among cleaning employees. However, cleaning companies can be approached about this and risk a fine if it is found.”
Maximum wage rise with CBS index
Many more articles from the CBA are covered in SieV's writing. Since the wage component is an important one in the cleaning industry, here we cover some criticisms related to it. “The current hourly wage of a cleaning employee is on average 19% higher than the minimum wage. Adding to this the year-end bonus of 4.2 per cent, the salary is over 20 per cent higher. The increase in hourly wages (and other direct wage costs) is not based on a CBS index while more and more contracts with clients are indexed to the maximum with the CBS index figure (services). In recent years, the increase in hourly wage costs has been structurally higher than the price index figure, forcing cleaning companies to surrender margins with all the negative side effects, with the main consequence of eventually having to increase work pressure. SieV's proposal is therefore to structurally allow wage increases to rise annually at most by the CBS index figure.”
End-of-year bonus fast becoming 13th month
According to SieV, the end-of-year bonus is fast becoming a 13th month. “SieV has expressed its desire in the past that this extra pay should not exceed 3 per cent. This has not been adopted by the collective agreement partners. Whereas in 2014, there was even talk of an annual increase of 1.8, 2 and 2.2 per cent in 3 years in addition to the salary increases, we as SieV can conclude that 3 years later (2019- 2021), this extra pay has increased almost about 1.5 times to 2.85, 3.2 and 4.2 per cent.” SieV's proposal is that the end-of-year bonus should not exceed 3 per cent, always taking social and economic developments into account.
Extra day off an eyesore
The extra day off is also a thorn in SieV's side. “Now, the current collective agreement stipulates that employees can take the extra day off on their own birthday or on May 1. A provision that is out of date and also impracticable in many cases. Because what to do if the birthday falls on a day in the weekend, on a day the employee is not working or on a public holiday? May 1 is also not a convenient option because it will always have to be considered whether it makes good business sense to specifically designate one day like May 1. Siev would rather see that this extra day is simply considered an extra holiday and can therefore be freely taken by agreement by the employee.”
Adjusting sickness pay
By law, an employee is entitled to 70 propcent of the gross monthly salary during the first and second year of illness. SieV also wants to amend this article to more current standards and suggests the following. “Primarily, for an employment contract longer than 2 years in case of illness, the salary continuation should be 100 procnet in the first six months, with a phasing-out arrangement thereafter. For large companies, we could move towards a 90 per cent wage payment for the next one-and-a-half years. For SMEs, however, the current two-year wage payment scheme is unfeasible. Insurances for this are extremely pricey, have a high deductible and cover only a part of the total wage costs, making it miss the mark. The proposal is therefore to further adjust the salary payment after six months to, say, 80-85 per cent for SMEs.”
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Finally, SieV says it assumes that the sufficient topics are important enough to start being included in the upcoming collective agreement. “Because they are issues that affect all employees and especially SME cleaning companies in the cleaning industry. Our objective in this is also to want to put a dot on the horizon towards a collective agreement that is up to date and does justice to society as we now know it and work in it.”
English (UK)