Employee participation - HR

Clear agreements have been made in the CLA with regard to employee participation, based on which the powers of the local consultative bodies have been transferred to the internal employee participation councils.

In December 2010, CLA parties agreed to initiate a discussion process in order to reposition employee participation. Responsibility for the process was assigned to the Social Fund for the Knowledge Sector (SoFoKles). A number of conferences on this issue have been organised and the Advisory Board for Employee Participation at Dutch Universities has been set up to give advice during the CLA negotiations with regard to possible modernisation of university employee participation.


All of this has resulted in concrete CLA agreements on this issue. For example, the parties have agreed to establish a representative working group in order to transfer powers from the local consultative bodies to the collective agreement negotiations. Furthermore, two experimental provisions have been included in Appendix C of the CLA that enable universities to allocate local employee participation powers primarily to the internal participation councils or to integrate the personnel section of the university council or works council into the local consultative body. In these experiments, the powers that the CLA currently assigns to the local consultative body are transferred to the internal participation council or the integrated participation council. The local consultative body does retain sole power to effectuate redundancy plans.

More information on this topic can be found in the following reports: 'Modernisation of Employee Participation at Dutch Universities' (Dutch only) and the Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities.