Garbage strike in The Hague gets underway, Rotterdam to strike next

Garbage collectors and other city cleaners in The Hague went on strike for a better collective bargaining agreement on Monday. They’ll not collect trash or clean the city’s streets on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. These civil servants in Rotterdam will start a six-day-long strike on Wednesday, trade union FNV announced last week.

The civil servants are striking for a better collective labor agreement. Negotiations between the trade unions and the association of Dutch municipalities VNG stalled in December. FNV demanded a 12 percent wage increase for 2023, automatic price compensation, and measures against the high workload. In its last offer on December 14, the VNG offered a 5 percent wage increase this year and 3 percent next year.

“The latest wage offer from the VNG shows completely insufficient appreciation,” an FNV spokesperson said last week. “Inflation is still extremely high, and the tightness on the labor market, together with the workload, is massive.”

City cleaners in Groningen stopped working over the weekend. In Utrecht, they went on strike for a week, leaving the city with mountains of trash piling up on the streets.