But it will take an estimated two weeks before the entire city is clean again. The strike ended yesterday, after the unions and the joint Dutch municipalities reached an agreement in which the unions got much of what they demanded. This year municipal civil servants will get a onetime raise of 1.5 percent on their wages, as well as a 0.5 percent raise on their end of year bonuses this year and in 2011, with the minimum bonus for the lowest pay scales raised from 836 to 1750 euros. As important if not more is the agreement that there will not be forced redundancies in the next two years. The agreement still has to be voted on by the union members, but there’s a good chance that they will accept it and in the meantime the strikers have gone back to work, just in time before the weather gets too hot…
All in all another excellent lesson in how a little bit of pressure can force employers back to the negotiation table…