Netherlands

Netherlands – notorious tax haven has put families under pressure for years

Manuela Kropp, Project Manager, RLS Brussels Office
The Dutch government led by Prime Minister Mark Rutte resigned last Friday (15 January 2021), following hours of deliberations. The four-party coalition made up of the right-wing liberal VVD, Christian Democrats, liberal Democrats 66 and Calvinist Christian Union will stay on as a caretaker government for the time being. Its resignation was prompted by a scandal surrounding the alleged undue payment of child benefits, which thousands of families were wrongly required to pay back, plunging many of those affected into...
read more "Netherlands – notorious tax haven has put families under pressure for years"
© Rob Nelisse / Jo van der Spek / FNV Bondgenoten
© Rob Nelisse / Jo van der Spek / FNV Bondgenoten
A far-reaching process of restructuring that did not come without difficulties.April 2014. All of the cleaning staff in the Netherlands who clean buildings belonging to the government and the state administration stop work at the same time and travel to protest in The Hague. Nobody cleans the parliament in the Dutch capital. Trains are left overflowing with rubbish. No one cleans Schiphol Airport. The cleaners working in office buildings also join the strike. As Getta Gajadhar explained to the press at the time, ‘We are ...
read more "How the Dutch trade union confederation got itself out of the crisis"
Image: SP, Manifestatie voor thuiszorg / Flickr / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Image: SP, Manifestatie voor thuiszorg / Flickr / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Fights We Can Win

May Naomi Blank (transl. by Loren Balhorn)
The Dutch Socialist Party’s Health Care InterventionDelivering his acceptance speech as the newly elected leader of the Socialist Party of the Netherlands (SP) towards the end of 2015, Ron Meyer informed his comrades they "have to do things differently. […] Not a little bit differently, but completely different." The former campaigner from the Federatie Nederlandse Vakbeweging (FNV) trade union federation had previously organised Dutch youth in a campaign to raise the minimum wage, and now his leadership would mark the beginning of a new, militant SP campaign for a public ...
read more "Fights We Can Win"