Union: Employers cutting on healthy, safe work environments

Many employers want to get rid of arrangements that ensure their employees have a healthy and safe work environment, says trade union FNV. According to the union, numerous sectors have problems with too heavy workloads, but employers thwart attempts to rectify this, ANP reports. "Employers don't care for their staff anymore. Especially large profitable companies are often led with an accountant mentality: keep the operating cost as low as possible and the benefit to shareholders as high as possible", FNV employment conditions coordinator Mariette Patijn said on Wednesday. The union even noticed that some employers hire freelancers not through the HR department, but through the purchasing department. "It seems that employers live in a different world. The put the entrepreneurs who go for quality and employees under enormous pressure." According to the union, employees' safety equipment is also often not up to standard - people climb scaffolding without helmets, earplugs are no longer custom made. According to the union, FNV still managed to make proper collective bargaining agreements for many employees, though doing so requires more and more protest actions. Over the past months metal workers, security guards and public transit employees, among others, all had to protest for better working conditions. FNV expects that more protests will follow.