Picnic employees are now covered by the collective labour agreement for Supermarkets after all. That is the opinion of trade union FNV. The collective labour agreement would have been amended, as a result of which Picnic employees are also seen as supermarket employees. Picnic says it knows nothing about this.
Last year, the court ruled - in a case brought by the FNV - that employees of online supermarket Picnic were not covered by the collective labour agreement. Because Picnic has subdivided its business activities into several PLCs, the supermarket collective labour agreement does not apply to all these business units. FNV did not agree with the judge's ruling. The appeal in the case was to be filed by this week at the latest, but the union is now abandoning it anyway.
According to FNV, the new CBA describes that supermarkets that have separated their operations into separate units are also covered by the new CBA. "The court ruled that what Picnic did was allowed. We considered an appeal, but that is no longer necessary with this collective agreement adjustment," said FNV executive Karin Heynsdijk.
Picnic knows nothing
This statement comes as a surprise to Picnic. Top man Michiel Muller says he knows nothing about it: "We are not in talks with any of the parties about this. Certainly not with FNV, because that union is not involved in the supermarket collective labour agreement at all, they ran away from that earlier," Muller let the Parool record.
There are two collective labour agreements in the supermarket sector, which differ slightly from each other. For Muller, it is unclear which collective labour agreement FNV is talking about: "Even if this had been agreed upon in one of the collective labour agreements, it has not been declared universally binding with retroactive effect. For that, the whole process with the government will have to be gone through again first. That will no longer work now that the court has ruled that companies like us, are not legally covered by the collective agreement."
'Striking timing'
The Picnic founder calls FNV's timing striking. "Monday was the last day FNV could have appealed against the judge's ruling. They apparently don't dare to do that and then they come up with this incorrect announcement, to save face."
