News

On Wednesday 27 August, a delegation of 12 cleaners and activists from FNV Bondgenoten in the Netherlands joined with colleagues from the CFDT Services and UNI Property Services in Paris to visit the offices of Pierre et Vacances.







Pierre et Vacances is the owner of the European tourist park operator Center Parcs. In January 2008, a German company, Menke, took over the contract to clean the Het Heijderbos Center Parc near the German border in the Netherlands.



Of the 200 cleaning workers at the Het Heijderbos site, around 100 are German and 100 are Dutch. Menke refused to apply the conditions of the Dutch collective agreement for its German workers. This meant lower wages and denial of entitlements such as sick pay, holiday pay and pensions. Workers who complained about breaches of the collective agreement, who joined, or expressed an interest, in joining the union, were punished and intimidated by the threats of fines, discrimination in shift allocation, verbal abuse and termination of employment.



FNV Bondgenoten and UNI Global Union called on Menke and Center Parcs in the Netherlands to resolve this situation on numerous occasions, without success. Last week, UNI wrote to Pierre et Vacances to request their intervention.



Wednesday's delegation was received by the French human resources manager of Pierre et Vacances, who listened to workers describing the issues they face at work with Menke. Pierre et Vacances agreed to set up a tripartite meeting between itself, Menke and FNV Bondgenoten to discuss outstanding issues and put in place mechanisms to resolve them.



UNI thanks CFDT Services for their support for FNV in this situation - demonstrating again the strength of international union cooperation.