5. the foundation for education and development. This foundation refunds the
occupational health fund and the training fund. It is also used for research related to
the industry.
The collective agreement in road haulage is a standard agreement, meaning that
exceptions from the agreement are not allowed. All employees are minimally granted a
40 hours working week. When persons work 35 hours per week, still 40 hours are being
compensated. Additional hours are paid a 130% rate. Work on Saturday and work on
Sunday is granted a 150% respectively 200% compensation. In addition, supplements are
paid for food and residence.
A major issue at the collective bargaining table of the road transport and airlines sector is
working time (Wet en RusttijdenRegeling, WRR). In 1996, the regulation of working time
in the Netherlands has been reformed. The 1996 Working Hours Act allows for more
flexibility in working time as it grants the social partners the right to determine working
hours at the industry and enterprise levels. Due to the Act’s emphasis on more
decentralized decision-making, collective bargaining actors and/ or works councils have
become an important body (Mevissen, et al., 2001: 12-13). The 1996 Working Hours Act
creates a so-called double-norms system (dubbele normstelsel) to regulate working time
(Mevissen, et al., 2001: 14-15). On the one hand, there is a standard arrangement, which
lays down basic provisions, which in principle apply to everyone. These are maximum
weekly working hours, a maximum work shift, and a maximum working time in a 13-
week period. The second arrangement, the consultation arrangement, allows for sector- or
company-level derogation from the standard arrangements on these three subjects, but
upon two conditions: only if employers and workers’ representatives agree (by means of
a collective arrangement), and as long as their arrangement remains within specified lim-
its. In the private sector, such a collective ‘consultation’ arrangement can take the form of
a collective agreement (concluded between management -or an employers’ association-
and the labour union(s), or of a written agreement between management and a works
council or a personnel representation. The collective wage agreement does not explicitly
have to grant this right to firm-level management and employee representatives; men-
tioning working time as a subject means that firm-level representatives are entitled to
make their own firm-level arrangements (Mevissen 2001:16).
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