Utrecht civil servants begin weeklong strike

Civil servants that work in city cleaning in the municipality of Utrecht started a weeklong strike for a better collective bargaining agreement on Tuesday, trade union FNV reported. Utrecht is the fifth municipality where municipal officials are taking labor actions. The street sweepers, garbage collectors, and people who keep the canals clean will not do so until next Monday.

According to FNV, about 500 of the 700 city cleaning staff are participating in the strike. The union expects large mountains of waste and dirty streets and canals.

Municipal officials in Tilburg, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, and Almere went on strike in the past weeks. In the first three municipalities, work interruptions lasted up to three hours. In Almere, civil servants stopped working for two days.

The collective labor agreement under which the municipal officials fall covers over 187,000 employees. FNV issued an ultimatum in mid-November after negotiations with the Association of Dutch Municipalities (VNG) stalled.

The municipalities offered a wage increase of 5 percent on February 1 and another 3 percent on April 1, 2024. FNV wanted a wage increase of 12 percent in one year. The union also demanded automatic price compensation in the collective bargaining agreement for 2024.