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| Welfare ''volunteers'' to take over some home help jobs |
12/30/2012 |
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Welfare ''volunteers'' to take over some home help jobs
Friday 28 December 2012
Some home helps in Rotterdam are to be replaced by welfare benefit claimants doing ‘voluntary work’, the Volkskrant reports on Friday.
Rotterdam city council is to require people considered to be hard to place to do compulsory volunteer work, the paper says, and this will include doing shopping and ironing for the housebound.
Ultimately, 10% of the work traditionally done by paid home helps should be done by welfare claimants, the council says. The council is responsible for home help services and is planning a major reorganisation this year following a government budget cut.
Jobs
Althought council official Marco Florijn told the paper the scheme is not supposed to replace paid jobs, unions are worried.
‘The council is going to use welfare claimants as free labour to replace paid jobs,’ FNV official Wim van der Hoorn told the paper. ‘This is a loss of employment.’
Further cuts are expected in 2014 when home help services will be reduced still further as part of government policy.
Dutch-German jobs initiative aims to ease cross-border labour shortage
Friday 28 December 2012
A cross-border jobs initiative has been set up along the northern Dutch-German border in an effort to help German firms fill their vacancies, Nos television reports on Friday.
The unemployment rate in the northern German border regions varies from 2% to 3% while in the Dutch northern provinces, it can be over 9%.
Many of the German firms are family-run companies which need staff, prompting the development of the new jobs platform Jobrobotor, which now has some 60,000 jobs online.
Wages
Aside from the government support they enjoy, the main reason for the better economic position of the German firms is that wages are lower, says Karel Groen, director of the Eems Dollard Regio initiative.
But this also means Dutch nationals are reluctant to take the jobs because of the lower pay rates. Wilhelm Kuiper of a family-run engineering firm, told Nos he has workers from 18 different nationalities working for him – but no-one from the Netherlands.
Groen hopes the new initiative will encourage people to take the German jobs. ‘It cannot be the case that German firms are bringing people in from Spain while 20 km away there are Dutch people without a job,’ he said.
© DutchNews.nl
Dutch banks cut their homeland workforces by 5,000 this year
Friday 28 December 2012
The big Dutch banks reduced their workforces in the Netherlands by some 5,000 jobs this year, the Financieele Dagblad said on Friday.
The job losses at ABN Amro, ING, Rabobank and SNS Reaal come on top of a further 17,000 financial services sector jobs between 2008 and the end of last year, the paper said.
Most financial institutions have cut their workforces by more than 10% since the fall of Lehman Brothers. The job losses stem from the need to cut costs which in turn partly derive from regulatory demands for less risky investments.
In addition, interest rates have gone up and customers have become more picky about policies and commission payments.
Hugo van Wijk of bank advisory bureau Vallstein expects further job losses. ‘Cost have to be cut by a further 20%,’ he told the FD. ‘I believe we are the point of a fundamental restructuring of banking practices.
Wilders to step up international anti-Islam campaign
Thursday 27 December 2012
PVV leader Geert Wilders is to step up his campaign against Islam in 2013, the parliamentarian told Nos television in an interview.
The fight against Islam is a mission for life, Wilders told the broadcaster.
Wilders said he would step up his fight against ‘the biggest sickness’ the Netherlands has had at home and internationally, ‘from Australia to America, from Switzerland to wherever.’
Wilders also again renewed his statement that the Netherlands has a ‘Moroccan problem’. It is Moroccan racism that they rarely rob each other, Wilders said.
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