Our country’s first major collective labor agreement was broken to reform employee purchasing power. About 16,000 employees in the paint and maintenance sector can count on a pay increase of at least 10.3 percent as of January 1. The MaintenanceNL branch organization and labor unions announced this Friday.
According to the AWVN Employers Association, this is the first major group work agreement in which this has happened. “We see that the parties want to talk about it. The situation now is also different, for example, two years ago. We are dealing with very high inflation and labor market shortages. Employers want to keep their employees.”
The wage increase is aimed, among other things, at employees in estate maintenance, renovation, restoration, insulation, painting, glazing, and industrial metal preservation.
Employers and trade unions point to the challenge that the maintenance sector in our country is currently facing: the energy crisis, geopolitical uncertainty, the challenge of sustainability, and labor market shortages.
According to the parties, “A regular increase in wages as an increase in costs is actually out of the question on the one hand, but on the other hand, it is necessary to maintain the purchasing power of the employees concerned. It also aims at attracting new employees.”