7 Conclusion.
This paper provides an overview of industrial relations, collective bargaining, employee
participation and the regulation of labour conflict in Dutch transport industry. In addition
to the national overview of transport, the two particular cases of the multi-employer
agreement in road haulage of freight and the single-employers agreements of KLM, have
been studied in greater detail. The case studies show that the collective agreements are
the crucial labour market institution for the regulation of employment and working
conditions in the Netherlands. Though works councils are granted substantial rights to
information, consultation and negotiation, employers and the trade unions take the most
important decisions in the process of collective wage setting. In addition to the direct
bargaining on employment conditions which takes place about every one or two years,
social partners also meet each other in the administration of the sectoral funds for
training, occupational health, pensions, pre-pensions and education and development
(road haulage) and in the sectoral council for aviation and in the management
consultation of the enterprise (KLM). At KLM there is extended consultation about the
development of the company. The social infrastructure of both road haulage and KLM
allows for exchange of information between management and labour and support for
management decisions. Due to the institutionalisation of contract parties, the propensity
to labour conflict is reduced.
Both collective agreements in road haulage and KLM are detailed documents with many
provisions and annexes. They illustrate the path dependency in the development of
industrial rules. In contrast to the American situation where new agreements e.g. at
Northwest Airlines are established every year, the Dutch collective agreements are
developing every year. In both cases, voices have been raised to reduce the complexity of
the agreements. In the case of KLM a principle agreement between management and the
many unions has been reached to initiate such as process. In spite of the demand for
‘modernization’ of the agreements, no major effort has been reached so far in either case
(compare Van der Meer and Smit, 2000).
In future, research on transport should be focused on several issues. First, it is relevant to
know how the decentralization of decision-making in industrial relations will influence
wages development and working hours. Moreover, the question is relevant whether the
globalisation of the transport sectors and the process of takeovers, mergers and scale-
enlargement between companies, results in a situation that new international benchmarks
are being proposed to measure and compare the tasks, functions and working hours of the
work force in the home country. The focus should also be placed on the issue whether the
actual job evaluation in practice (given the current processes of company restructuring)
fits with the description of the job in the collective agreement. It is also necessary to
study the extent in which trade unions and the employers’ associations are able to keep
their membership up level and are willing to continue the social infrastructure of the
industry. Finally, it should be studied to what extent sectoral agreements will compete
with particular forms of welfare provisions for certain groups of employees at enterprise
level.
37