For decades, the #vakbeweging improve the lives of workers. In the long run they all had a car, a colour TV and an annual holiday on the Costa del Sol. But from the 1970s, the unions lost their influence. Where did it go wrong?

The wet dream of Wiebes and other neoliberals!For a long time, the so-called 'coalition ban' applied: both employees and employers were not allowed to organize or take action to enforce certain requirements or conditions. For workers this meant that they were not allowed to strike and not to form unions. Terms of employment were a matter of agreements between the individual employee and the individual employer. There were no legal regulations and the employee was hired as needed. He agreed the remuneration with the employer, and as soon as there was no work or he was no longer able to work, the agreement lapsed.In short, every factory worker, ground worker, peasant and labourer in the port was in fact a self-employed avant la lettre. The wet dream of Wiebes and other neoliberals!

Especially since the financial crisis of 2008, the number of people without a permanent employment contract has risen enormously.

Currently, the Netherlands has no less than 3 million 'flex workers' — call workers, temporary workers and self-employed workers — which is more than a third of all workers.

More and more young people are starting a small business. Of course, this has major consequences for the trade union movement. Currently, about 1.6 million people are members of a trade union. There are 100,000 more than in 1970, but at that time the labour force — which consisted predominantly of men — was almost twice as small. Flex workers in particular are difficult to organize, but that is not the only reason that fewer people are able to find their way to a trade union.

The self-image of employees — and many self-employed workers are hardly glorified workers — has also changed significantly.Anyone who does not become famous or knows how to set up a flourishing own business is actually a loser. Working for someone else is actually just something you do temporarily, and the trade union movement is actually a bucket of suckers.

Flex workers remain difficult to organize and the neoliberal mentality does not change very quickly either. For example, some confuse the recent actions of angry peasants with actions of trade unions, but this is a misunderstanding.

Farmers are entrepreneurs and not employees, and they do not want to be at all. The Farmers Defence Force should therefore not be seen as a militant trade union, but rather as the fighting team of legal opulism.





Trade union in decline