One condition is that the executive board should offer the conditions of the social plan draft to all staff members affected by the reorganization. The council also demands that all PhD students in affected research groups be given the opportunity to finish their current PhD work with a thesis. Finally, the council calls for a procedure to be instated promptly that will allow them to monitor the progress of the reorganization.
Through Dean Alfred Bliek, the S&T management team informed us that they accept the terms. The executive board will enter into agreements with individual staff members about the measures to be taken, based on the draft social plan of May 2, 2006. The unions (united in deliberative body OPUT) object to these events. `The executive board is ignoring the rules,' OPUT Chairman Jan van der Meij says. `They are offering a social plan to staff members without consulting the unions. That is in violation of the collective labor agreement.'
An agreement was never reached because negotiations about the social plan reached an impasse last month. Van der Meij: `The executive board intended to determine a social plan with us, but we failed to agree on two major points. First of all, staff members who retire early lose part of the pension. This has to be compensated financially, but we failed to reach agreement on the exact amount of compensation.'
Another hotly debated issue is dismissal threat. `By changing job descriptions and scrapping other jobs, you create a dismissal threat. That is unacceptable to us because it makes it possible to get rid of specific employees by eliminating their jobs,' the OPUT chairman says.
Yesterday, the OPUT consulted its members about the social plan draft. `A majority voted against it. Now that the executive board has accepted the conditions of the faculty council and are offering a social plan without consent of the unions, we will pass this on to our national representatives, who will have to open a dialog with the association of universities, the VSNU, about this.'
Trans. Jeroen Latour
