On the 17th April 2014, dr.ir. Fredericus Veer (representative of AC-HOP) was guest-speaker at a DEWIS lunch meeting, on behalf of the four trade unions at TU Delft. He explained details from the Collective Wage Agreement for Dutch University and answered questions about it.
4. THE COLLECTIVE WAGE AGREEMENT
• Under Dutch law the collective wage
agreement is an extension of the law.
• It cannot contravene the law, but is legally
enforceable as a law.
• The collective wage agreement regulates a
number of things.
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5. THE COLLECTIVE WAGE AGREEMENT
• Salary
• The system of ranks (UFO)
• Leave including maternity and special leave
• Temporary and fixed contracts
• Being ill
• Annual evaluations
• Terminating a contract
• Reorganisations
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6. THE COLLECTIVE WAGE AGREEMENT
• The language of the collective wage
agreement is in many cases ambiguous.
• The employers prefer it that way.
• Besides the text of the agreement there is the
intention of the text which can be legally
binding if there is ambiguity.
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9. DE FACTO POLICY
• Keep as many people on short term contracts
as possible.
• Try to avoid contracts for unspecified periods.
• Tenure track is part of this policy and is
sanctioned by the collective wage agreement.
• Note maximum is six years. Some employers
try to put the clock to zero by enforcing a six
month unemployment period.
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10. NORMAL LEAVE
• The collective wage agreement specifies that a
full time employee has 232 hours of paid
leave. A number of these hours can be fixed
by the university such as the days between
Christmas and New Year.
• The employee can take leave whenever
he/she wants for the other leave hours .
• Only in case of extreme necessity can the
employer refuse to grant leave.
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11. OVERTIME
• Scientific staff cannot get paid for overtime.
• You can register overtime in TIM.
• You can use registered overtime as leave.
• This is not transferrable to next year.
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12. BUYING AND SELLING LEAVE
• In IKA you can buy extra leave if you need it.
(If you use your overtime, you usually do not
need to buy extra leave.)
• In IKA you can also sell leave to the employer
for a bicycle or any other approved choice.
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13. EXCESS LEAVE
• Starting in 2014 the amount of leave that you
can transfer to next year is limited.
• What you cannot transfer, you’ll lose.
• Excess leave however can be put into the
sabbatical saving scheme.
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14. MATERNITY LEAVE
• There is extra leave for pregnancy.
• There is also leave for young parents.
• If you are PhD, your contract can be extended
to compensate for this leave.
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15. SPECIAL LEAVE
You have right to extra leave for:
– Family-related events
(There is a fixed scale for extra leave, depending on how close the
family member is etc.) see the link at the bottom of this page
• Marriage
• Partner going into labour
• Wedding anniversary
• Death
– Moving house
https://intranet.tudelft.nl/en/terms-of-employment/leave/
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16. SPECIAL LEAVE
• If you have ill children, or an ill spouse, you
have right to special leave to take care of your
family.
• If this is for short periods, it does not cost you
money.
• If it is for longer periods, there is a salary
deduction.
• HR sometimes gets this wrong.
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17. SALARY
• For each UFO function there is a fixed salary
scale.
• If you do not meet all the requirements of a
function, you are put in 0 scale.
• If you meet all requirements, you are put
higher in the scale.
• Basically one year of experience puts you one
step higher in the scale.
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18. SALARY
• The employer basically tries to put you in as
low as possible in most cases.
• If you get a promotion, you are put in the
higher scale.
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• The transition is
horizontal, so you usually
only get a small salary
increase immediately.
19. BONUS
• The collective wage agreement allows the
employer to reward exceptional employees
with up to a month extra salary.
• For academic staff these bonuses are
comparatively rare.
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20. 30% RULING
• If you are a foreign national who full fills a
technical function, the 30% tax rule might
apply.
• This means that you pay less taxes for up to 12
years.
• TU Delft sometimes applies this rule in the
wrong way.
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21. 30% RULING
• If a project has a limited subsidy (Mary Curie), the
tax rule is invoked to create a better net wage
from the lower gross wage.
• However there is a policy that staff on normal
salaries cannot use this rule.
• Otherwise a foreign assistant professor would
have a higher net wage that an experienced
associate professor.
• This is not the intention of the tax law but a
deliberate policy of the university.
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22. OTHER JOBS IN THE UNIVERSITY
• Sometimes people have a full time job in the
university, and teach some classes at the sport
centre also.
• For these hours you can be paid. The sport
centre transfers the funding to your faculty
and the faculty pays it to you as a bonus.
• But, this means extra administration.
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23. MORTGAGES
• The Dutch mortgage system is more
advantageous for people with a contract for
an unlimited period.
• So for PhD’s and people on a temporary
contract (including tenure track), this is a
problem.
• There is no solution to this except to re-
mortgage after you get the contract for an
unlimited period.
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24. ILLNESS
• If you are ill the first nine months there is no
reduction of salary.
• After nine months there is a reduction in
salary.
• After two years, the employer might try to put
you into the invalid (WIA) system. This is a
problem and it rarely goes well.
• Advice: just try to be ill for less than nine
months.
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25. EVALUATION
• The collective wage agreement prescribes a
yearly evaluation and a mid yearly discussion
about how the work goes.
• Basically there is only the annual evaluation.
• This is only as good as your boss makes it.
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26. EVALUATION
• This is the point where you have to be careful. The
annual evaluation is where you make binding
agreements on:
– Education for the employee.
– Publications
– Conferences
– Sabbaticals
– Work pressure
– Promotion steps.
– They also count for bonuses
In practice the annual evaluation round is not used
enough by the employees.
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27. TERMINATING THE CONTRACT
• You can terminate your contract yourself.
• But this is not a clever thing to do, as you lose
all rights to unemployment benefits.
• The employer can terminate the contract,
while you retain rights to unemployment
benefits.
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28. REASONS FOR TERMINATION
• Incompatibility between employee and boss.
• The position is cut.
• The employee has not functioned satisfactorily
for at least two years.
• The term of the contract is finished.
The employer cannot simply terminate the
contract. He needs to have a good reason, or the
employee needs to agree with termination of the
contract.
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29. REORGANISATION
• The university regularly reorganises.
• In theory this is to compensate for financial
problems.
• In practice this is usually the method chosen to
solve years of bad management.
• Get help or advice from an expert as quickly as
possible if you are part of a reorganisation. These
are complex processes where the rights of the
individual (foreign) employee are often
neglected.
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