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Strike shuts down Cargill factories
The four Dutch factories of the American company Cargill have been shut down since Monday afternoon, January 18. Employees have resigned due to great dissatisfaction with the employment conditions and the absence of a new collective labor agreement.
The Dutch factories of Cargill in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Sas van Gent and Bergen op Zoom have been shut down since Monday afternoon, January 18. This is the result of the dead end of talks between trade unions FNV and CNV and the employer about a new collective labor agreement.
The current agreements have already expired since last July. Due to the corona crisis, the American company wanted to postpone the negotiations until January and extend the existing collective labor agreement by about 5 months. In the Netherlands, employees were offered a salary increase of 1,25% for that period.
Strike as a result
The unions do not agree with the above proposal. They demand a longer-term wage increase of 5%, with retroactive effect from August 1, 2020. However, Cargill does not want to go further than a 4% increase and then only for a period of 1,5 years.
Converted on an annual basis, the latest offer amounts to an increase of 2,66%. That is not even close to 5%, the unions report. According to them, the company is increasingly relying on employees as a result of the ever-increasing profits, but this cannot be done without compensation in the form of a wage increase.
Since Cargill has not agreed to the proposal from the workers and their unions, they have decided to lay down the work indefinitely. This affects the processing of raw materials and other agricultural products, such as grains, worldwide.
Kimberly Baker
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