Cargill grants almost all employee wishes

Food giant Cargill has reached an agreement with the trade unions and employees in the Netherlands on a new collective labor agreement. This ended the strike at four of the company's product locations, which started Monday, January 18, just before last weekend.

The Dutch employees of the product locations in Amsterdam, Sas van Gent, Rotterdam and Bergen op Zoom had Monday 18 January the work has been laid down to express dissatisfaction with the proposed terms of employment.

Due to the corona crisis, the American company has postponed negotiations until January and has extended the existing collective labor agreement by approximately 5 months. "The new supply amounts to an annual increase of 2,66%. That is not even close to 5%," the unions wrote at the time.

Food producer Cargill has since made a new offer. "It describes that all employees in the Netherlands receive 2 times 3% wages", FNV director Jos Hendriks reports on the union's website. However, this was not decisive. "This was the fact that our demand to extend the social plan for another 3 years has been granted by Cargill." With this, the strike was definitively ended on Friday afternoon, January 22.

Retroactivity
Another requirement was that these new conditions would be retroactive. "This requirement has also been approved by the board of Cargill. This new collective labor agreement has a term of 2 years and will therefore take effect on 1 August 2020. The first wage increase of 3% will therefore also be paid with effect from 1 August. The second wage increase (of also 3%) will take effect on August 1, 2021," explains Hendriks.

FNV and the management of Cargill in the Netherlands have also reached an agreement on a separate 5-year 'Early Retirement Scheme' and 100% of the salary will continue to be paid in the event of additional birth and adoption leave. "All in all, we have therefore reached an almost 100% score," reports the union.

Kimberly Baker

Kimberly Bakker is an all-round editor at Boerenbusiness. She also has an eye for the social media channels of Boerenbusiness.

k.baker @boerenbusiness. Nl

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