Another wildcat strike at VDL Nedcar

Employees of VDL Nedcar put down work on their own initiative around 08:00 and walked outside. After standing there for a while, everyone went back inside, but production did not resume immediately. Production was restarted around 11 a.m., said works council chairman Abdel Lahssaini (or) on Tuesday. The Works Council disapproves of the action, as do the trade unions. A wildcat strike is a work stoppage that is not supported by unions. The action seems to follow the hour-long discussions of the unions with the management of VDL on Monday. The employees would not be happy with the outcome of those negotiations on a new social plan.

In the course of Tuesday afternoon, the unions will inform the employees about the negotiations, on Thursday the members of the unions will be updated and then their opinion will be asked about how to proceed, according to announcements from unions and Works Council. “We are in the middle of a negotiation process,” Lahssaini said. “We negotiated until late on Monday. On Tuesday the unions didn’t even have time to update everyone and the work stoppage broke out.” Lahssaini says he is not happy with that. The unions want an improved social plan in the run-up to the expected mass layoffs, because the production contract with BMW expires early next year and no successor has yet been found.

It is not the first time that a wildcat strike has broken out at Nedcar. A few weeks ago there was also a wildcat strike that lasted for two days and was eventually followed by a regular strike. After that, the parties agreed that there would be new negotiations. They started on Monday, but according to sources around the unions, they would have come to nothing. “They sat around the table for seven hours, but nothing came of it,” said an executive of the Belgian trade union ABVV on Tuesday.