Christelijk Nationaal Vakverbond

CNV
Full name National Federation of Christian Trade Unions in the Netherlands
Native name Christelijk Nationaal Vakverbond
Founded May 13, 1909
Members 350,000[1]
Affiliation ITUC, ETUC
Office location Utrecht, The Netherlands
Country Netherlands
Website www.cnv.nl

The Christelijk Nationaal Vakverbond (English: National Federation of Christian Trade Unions in the Netherlands; CNV) is a federation of trade unions of the Netherlands.

History

The CNV was founded on May 13, 1909, in Arnhem as a federation of several Christian unions. It was founded in reaction to the socialist NVV, which was founded in 1906. The CNV was more moderate than the NVV. It opposed the idea of class struggle and instead oriented itself towards a corporatist model of the economy. It was an interconfessional union, intended to represent both Protestant and Roman Catholic workers.

In 1912, however, the Roman Catholic bishops spoke out against interconfessional unions. All Roman Catholics left CNV and founded a separate Roman Catholic union, the RKWV "Rooms-Katholieke Werklieden Verbond" (Roman Catholic Workers' Union). The CNV orientated itself towards the Protestant Anti Revolutionary Party, with which it formed the Protestant pillar.

After the Second World War, the corporatist model, which the CNV advocated was introduced in the Netherlands, this was combined with a strong welfare state. Unions received more influence in Dutch politics: the CNV became part of the Social-Economic Council an advisory board of government composed of representatives from unions, employers' organizations and independent scientists.

Because of the depillarization of Dutch society and the rising political polarization between left and right, the three major unions, the socialist NVV, the Protestant CNV and the Catholic NKV began to open talks in order to found one single federation of Dutch unions. In 1974 the CNV left those talks. In 1976 the NVV and NKV merged to form the FNV, which was led by Wim Kok.

Activities

The most important function of CNV is the CAO-talks, over wages and secondary working conditions, it holds with the employers' federations. It also advises government via the Social Economic Council in which other unions, the employers' organizations and government appointed experts also have seats.

Ideology

The CNV started out as a moderate, Christian-democratic union, which was opposed to class struggle and workers' ownership of the means of production. Gradually, however, it oriented itself towards cooperation with the employers' organizations and a corporatist model of the economy. The CNV still prefers cooperating with employers over strikes.

In recent years it has been more successful in adapting to new societal trends compared to the FNV. It has founded a youth union, CNV-jongeren to address the issues of the aging population and it has campaigned on issues of international cooperation with a separate organization called CNV international.

Organization

The CNV is a federation of six affiliated trade unions. Its board is formed by four daily boardmembers (a chairman, a vice-chairman, a secretary and a treasurer), and the chairs of the four affiliated unions. The CNV has around 355,000 members. The current chair is Maurice Limmen. Although the CNV is formally independent of other organizations there are strong ideological and personal links with the CDA. Former CNV vice chair Aart-Jan de Geus served between 2002 and 2007 as CDA minister of Social Affairs and Employment for instance.

The eight affiliated unions are:

External links

References

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 4/17/2015. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.