Public transport (bus and tramway companies) can be divided into regional transport and
local transport. Regional transport has been fully privatised but the major companies have
a regional monopoly.19 Although regional transport used to be in public ownership, their
employees never had civil servants' status and have traditionally been represented by the
private sector transport unions. Wages and employment conditions are regulated by one
sectoral collective wage agreement. Local transport companies operate in eight major
cities in The Netherlands. Local transport is partly privatised (with the government
(mostly the local government) being the major shareholder), partly still a state service. As
a consequence there are two regulatory regimes of employment conditions for people
working in local transport: company collective wage agreements for 'private' employees
(in the cities The Hague, Groningen, Maastricht and Nijmegen), and the municipal
juridical legal status ('gemeentelijke rechtspositieregeling') for civil servants (in the cities
Amsterdam, Dordrecht, Rotterdam and Utrecht). The representation of these companies
and their employees is fragmented as well. Employees working for state-owned
companies, as well as employees in two privatised companies, are represented by the
public sector labour unions, whereas the private sector transport unions organise the other
private sector employees.
• Collective bargaining in private bus transport
There is one sectoral collective agreement for this subsector. Company collective
agreements do no exist (KNV Busvervoer, interview).
• Collective bargaining in taxi transport
The companies with employees are covered by one sectoral collective wage agreement. It
must be noted that the taxi sector is characterised by a high percentage of self-employed
professionals, particularly in the major cities. According to estimates of KNV Taxi there
are about 3000 taxi companies of which 1600 companies have employees; the others are
self-employed professionals.20
• Collective bargaining in road haulage of freight
Since 1989, there are two multi-employer sectoral collective agreements for the road
haulage of freight. One collective agreement is concluded by the employer's organisation
for the road haulage of freight, TLN. TLN merged out of several smaller employers’
associations, and currently covers 6-7,000 most small- and medium-sized enterprises.
This agreement has been generally extended by the government and covers apart from the
TLN-members also the 5,000 companies that are unaffiliated with an employers’
association. In sum all 12,000-13,000 enterprises are covered by collective bargaining.
The second agreement is signed by KNV, the employers’ association for the about 120
larger companies, that has antecedents to the 19th century. In 1989 this organization
decided to quit the sectoral agreement when a union strike on night bonuses for
employees especially appeared to hit the larger companies. The decentralised
19 Connexxion (Noord-Nederland), Arriva (Midden-Nederland), BBA (Zuid-Nederland), Hermes (Zuid-Nederland)
20 So-called “eigen rijders” (self drivers).
18