The ‘Social Statute TU/e 2022,’ which will soon become available online in English as well, once again has a term of three years and was arrived at in 2021 in ‘co-creation between the unions and the employer,’ it says in the official announcement. “The time had truly come for an update,” according to Van der Valk. Several important issues were discussed, she says, including career development, internal mobility and leadership. She’s also content with the fact that all the applied terms were defined much more clearly in the new statute.

The new statute defines three types of organizational adjustments – organizational development, organizational changes and reorganization – and provides a detailed description of the process, approach and (assignment)procedure off staff members for each of these three types.  Each type comes with a possibility of a mobility phase on a voluntary basis designed to tackle staff-related problems in an early phase via social flanking policy measures. Social flanking policy that also applies in case of organizational changes or reorganization.

Salary guarantee

Salary guarantee for staff members reassigned to a suitable position with a lower salary scale was an important topic during the meeting, Van der Valk says. “Throughout the country, some people believed that salary guarantee no longer applied since the Collective Labor Agreement makes no specific mention of it anymore. However, that’s a misconception, because it was agreed that the replacement of the civil service law by the private employment law in early 2020 would not have an impact on employment conditions, but that it would only constitute a change in technical terms,” Van der Valk declares. “In the end, TU/e and the trade unions agreed that this salary guarantee will remain as it is, and this is also how it was included in the statute.”

The new document adds several elements to the basis on which a position can be considered suitable. In case of an assignment procedure due to an organizational change or reorganization, an objective assessment has been added should a dispute arise about the suitability of a position. Van der Valk: “The trade unions are definitely satisfied with this statute’s emphasis on internal mobility within TU/e and the initiatives that will be developed for this. We truly managed to find each other on this issue.”

The fact that, as stated above, employees in higher education fall under private employment law since early 2020, also played an important role in the decision to draft a new statute, Van der Valk says. “The statute fully matches that adjustment, and it also includes the recently changed definition of ‘reorganization’ in the Collective Labor Agreement for Dutch Universities 2021-2022.”