Developing collective bargaining in the care sector Social partners’ repertoire of actions: the case studies

Social partners in the Dutch care sector have initiated quite a lot of labour market policies to tackle interrelated problems of job quality and staff shortages during recent years (2022-2025). Beneficial conditions for initiating and implementing such policies are (i) the funding of sector funds, financed by mandatory employer contributions, regulated in the CAs, and (ii) collaborations with and associated subsidies from the state. Also, the separation of ‘distributive bargaining’, in the context of renewing collective agreements, from integrated bargaining, in the context of labour market policies, seems to be a beneficial factor in broadening the social partners’ repertoire of actions aimed at joint strategies for tackling challenges in job quality and labour market scarcity. In this way, social dialogue on joint sector interests are shielded from conflicted negotiations in zero-sum bargaining.

All case-studies share the crucial factor of implementation in practice, in local labour markets and at the level of workplaces. In all cases, there is a need for investment in supportive structures for dialogue and the guidance of workers at different career stages relating to training, working hours and sustainable employability. Remarkably, social partners in both ECEC and LTC believe that better workers’ voice and professional employee participation are good starting points for discussing job quality and sustainable employability. At the same time, these dialogue structures at the levels of providers and workplace levels demand strong frameworks of collective agreements and other regulations.