International

Thanks to four proposals from the SP and the Labour Party, representatives of the Dutch government will be attempting in Brussels to get the new Posted Workers Directive tightened up. The Posted Workers Directive concerns employees who are sent by their firms to work temporarily in another member state, and the aim of tightening up the measure would be to improve their conditions. SP Member of Parliament Jasper van Dijk explains that this isn’t good news for foreign workers only, but for Dutch workers too, for example truck drivers. “If workers from the Netherlands and from abroad are no longer played off against each other because of unequal working conditions,” he says, “unfair competition will be reduced.”

Jasper van Dijk presented the motions, together with Labour’s Gijs van Dijk, during the debate on the new EU Posted Workers Directive. The proposed new measure would mean that workers would be permitted to work under less favourable conditions of employment for a maximum 24 hours in another member state. The SP and Labour are in agreement that this period should be shortened. “Too often Dutch workers are being replaced by cheap labour from eastern Europe, simply because they can be put to work on starvation wages. This has to stop.” Only the neoliberal VVD and the far right PVV voted against the additional proposal to extend the directive to the transport sector. If it were up to these parties truck drivers would enjoy no further protection against unfair competition.