also occurred in public railways. In air traffic labour conflicts, strikes are usually of short
duration, though in 1999 air traffic control faced an intensive dispute. Recently, major
protest was kept in the taxi branch. The taxi market has undergone major changes with
the recent deregulation of the Law on Passengers' Traffic (Wet Personenvervoer), which
entered into force January 2000. Access to the taxi market has been liberalised; any com-
pany may receive a permit, which ended the monopoly of major taxi companies in the
bigger cities in The Netherlands. Spring 2000, the entry onto the market of one major
competitor caused major turmoil (referred to by the press as the Amsterdam Taxi War).
These protests were not directed towards management however but towards the compet-
ing taxi firm, and as such not part of industrial conflict.
Aviation
At KLM there is no tradition of labour conflicts. There is a quite strong identification
with the company, the ‘blue feeling’: most staff is aware of the economic vulnerability of
the company and employees are for that reason less willing to go on strike. In general,
there is mutual trust between the company board and the unions, but our spokespersons
argue that there is perhaps less trust at the work floor between line management and em-
ployees. Most employees perceive any change of their employment conditions and work
organisation as a deterioration of their position. There have indeed been many company
restructuring processes (Focus 2000, Baseline). The unions can mobilise this distrust, out
of fear for a decline of membership and a loss of their strategic position. According to
KLM, the trust of employees in their representative organisations has declined as well.
This has resulted more frequent ‘though negotiation positions’ of some unions. Unions
also watch each other: they do not ‘give in’ before the other one does, and this sometimes
leads to deadlocks in the negotiations, though not in open conflicts. Despite the tradition
of institutionalised and coordinated collective bargaining, and the lack of a strike tradition
at KLM, there are relatively frequent wild-cat work interruptions of usually a couple of
hours only, for example for protests about the function classification or working hours.
There is also a trend towards juridification of employment relations: employees go to
court or to the Commission for Equal Treatment more frequently than before.
In 2001 and 2002 however a number of wildcat strikes occurred by ground machine
technicians. In 2002 a unions was established for this category of staff, the NVLT, in
response to an international benchmark study, which revealed significant wage
differences between Dutch and American employees. KLM-based ground machine
technicians, referring to the outcome of the study, demanded an additional (40%) wage
increase to ‘close the gap’ with their American colleagues, which, in their view, get paid
more for doing the same work (HFD, 30-7-2001; 29-7-2002). KLM recognised the
NVLT as bargaining party but does not attach the same value to benchmark studies,
which in their view do not take into account country-specific factors, such as the
interrelatedness of employment conditions, social security and labour law, and
differences in costs-of-living and industrial relations traditions. Furthermore, there is no
international labour market for ground machine technicians and KLM provides the
necessary education and training for this category of staff itself.
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