Amsterdam civil servants start week-long strike

Municipal officials in Amsterdam started a week-long strike on Monday at 6:30 a.m. The striking civil servants include employees of city cleaning, like garbage collectors and street cleaners. The municipality warned that the strike would cause a lot of nuisance.

During the strike, the city will collect no bulky waste, household waste, recycling, and organic waste. The streets will not get swept, trash cans will not be emptied, and reports about garbage on the street will not be handled. During previous civil servant strikes in Utrecht, Rotterdam, and The Hague, mountains of rubbish accumulated in the streets.

The municipality asked Amsterdam residents to keep their waste at home as much as possible during the strike. Do not put bags of garbage on the street. However, the municipality did agree with the trade unions that waste could be collected at the city’s markets. “On the daily markets, waste is cleared away at the end of the day, and the market is cleaned. Market masters will supervise this,” said responsible alderman Hester van Buren in the city council last week.

During the strike, supervision and enforcement officers will be on the street, but they will not issue fines. Though people guilty of serious disruptions, violations, or extreme behavior will still get a penalty, the municipality said.

Municipal officials in Maastricht and Den Bosch will strike from Wednesday. That could cause problems because the streets won’t be cleaned after Carnival, which ends on Tuesday.

Civil servants are striking for a better collective bargaining agreement. Among other things, the unions want a wage increase of 12 percent this year. Trade union FNV also demanded automatic compensation for inflation next year.