Primary education collective bargaining agreement

The primary education collective bargaining parties reached an agreement on a new collective bargaining agreement on April 27, 2016. This will allow for more fixed-term employment contracts. In this post, I discuss the implications of this for the provision of appropriate education.

From July 1, 2016, the consequences of the introduction of the Work and Security Act (Wwz) will also apply to special primary education. Under this law, employees will be entitled to an indefinite employment contract sooner than was previously the case. For example, under the "chain rule," an employer can offer a maximum of three employment contracts in a 24-month period. The fourth contract, or the contract entered into after 24 months, is indefinite.

The law gives the possibility to broaden this chain arrangement in a collective agreement. The agreement shows that the CAO PO will make use of this broadening option, so that a maximum of 6 fixed-term employment contracts may be offered in a period of up to 36 months. So for teachers looking forward to an indefinite employment contract, this initially sounds like bad news.

The collective bargaining parties have agreed to this extension in particular to give shape to the new substitute policy. Flexible and temporary employment contracts in primary education are primarily intended for substitute teachers who are temporarily absent. Without the broadening of the chain rule, the use of a substitute teacher would be limited, because after three employment contracts, the substitute teacher would already be entitled to a permanent contract. The duration of the employment contracts (even if it is only one day) is irrelevant to this.

The broadening thus offers the possibility of using substitute teachers for longer, but especially more often. This flexibility can also be useful in the implementation of appropriate education. For example, schools are better able to use experts such as psychologists and remedial educationalists for short periods of time. The specialists can be used to meet the specific educational needs of a student. In other words, in this way, the school is better able to offer appropriate education without incurring all sorts of labor law risks and the school being forced to offer the experts hired a permanent contract after a short period of time.

All in all, at first glance the widening of the chain rule seems like bad news for teachers in special primary education who are looking forward to an indefinite employment contract. Yet this very widening offers opportunities for both schools, teachers and students in the context of appropriate education and flexibility in that regard. As of July 1, 2016, we will have to see how these opportunities work out in practice.