Municipal officials, such as firefighters, boas, garbage collectors and GGD employees, will receive an extra pay of 1.5 percent per month. And in April 2022, their wages will rise by another 2.4%. This came in the new collective labor agreement that the municipalities agreed with the trade unions.

Municipal officials will also earn at least €14 per hour from now on. For people who, with a wage increase of 3.9 percent, will remain below €14, this means an additional wage increase. According to the trade union FNV, many civil servants earn just over the legal minimum wage of €10.34. “This is one of the biggest collective labor agreements where we agreed to €14,” says Marieke Manschut of FNV. “Let’s hope the new government will follow the example of the Collective Labor Agreement for the rest of the Netherlands.”

Extra bonus and allowance for working from home

In addition to the wage increase, civil servants also receive an additional one-time payment of €1,200 in total. Municipal officials who must work from home will now receive a home work allowance of €2 net per day.

The collective action agreement runs until January 1, 2023 and applies to approximately 185,000 people. It has been negotiated for about a year. Municipalities initially offered a zero percent increase in wages. “The negotiations were very difficult and we had to take action to achieve this result,” said Joan Schot of the CNV union. “This is also a period when municipalities must become more attractive as employers in the current tight job market.”