Dutch military unions battle for better conditions
By Thor Kerr
THE HAGUE (JP): Sailors, soldiers and air force crews cannot fight their employers anywhere in the world, except the Netherlands. Here military personnel can join one of five unions aiming to get them better working conditions, pay and protection against abuse and discrimination.
Twenty eight thousand of the 68,000 Dutch armed forces members have joined the country's biggest military union, the Union for Defense Personnel. For about US$6 a month they get a free Amex card, insurance, the union magazine and access to five lawyers.
The lawyers help members keep their hair long, get promoted and refuse orders in peacetime, much to the chagrin of military commanders, who can do little about cutting off the odd ponytail flip-flopping around their parade grounds.
Only in war and in peacetime operations are the union and the country's progressive labor laws pushed aside in favor of the efficiency of a strictly hierarchical military command.
Union chairman Jan Golsteyn said that nowhere else in the world were armed forces personnel afforded union protection.
Governments have outlawed military unionism ever since thousands of Russian soldiers refused orders and walked home from the front line during World War I, leaving the country wide open to communist revolution.
But Golsteyn, whose shaved head, bull neck and thick moustache make him appear more like a sergeant major than a union boss, argued that unhappy soldiers were inferior soldiers. Therefore, the union's work to improve their conditions was making the Dutch armed forces more efficient.
"We negotiate about wages, pensions, free time, social security and, well, you name it," says Golsteyn. "We are telling our minister of defense, you have a problem."
The Dutch government has not always been willing to recognize or negotiate with the union, which was set up in 1897 by a few naval volunteers fed up with low pay, terrible conditions and abusive officers.
Back then socialism and trade unionism were gaining momentum in Europe, the Dutch navy's moral was deteriorating and its personnel were in such despair that alcoholism was rampant among the sailors.
The first naval unionists met fierce resistance from the government and the navy, said Golsteyn. But the government failed to suppress them despite fears a military union would endanger national security.
Surabaya
Naval union branches opened rapidly across the Netherlands and its colonies.
The union's Surabaya branch opened its headquarters in 1903. This branch soon earned a reputation for its militancy and communist tendencies, but its doors were closed to Indonesian sailors.
According to Dutch history, the Surabaya branch developed close links with the Social Democratic Union of the Indies, which became the Indonesian Communist Party, and in 1916 hundreds of its members rallied to protest appalling conditions at the Surabaya military hospital.
Tensions between unionist sailors and the Dutch navy peaked in February 1933 aboard The Seven Provinces, anchored near Kuta Raja, Sumatra. The Dutch government had just cut sailors' salaries by 10 percent and nationalist sentiment was ripe among the 256 Indonesian sailors aboard the warship.
The warship's crew led by Indonesians, but including 141 Dutch sailors, mutinied to protest the salary cuts, discrimination and the jailing of hundreds of sailors.
The ship's commander failed to negotiate an end to the mutiny and the ship set sail for Surabaya. It sailed along the West coast of Sumatra, publicizing the crew's protest and defiance of the colonial authorities. The warship's commander and other officers tagged along behind at a safe distance in another boat.
As the navy's embarrassment mounted, the Dutch Minister of Defense ordered that the mutinous crew be "torpedoed to the bottom of the ocean".
Dutch aircraft bombed the ship on Feb. 10, 1933, killing 23 Indonesian and Dutch sailors and wounding many more.
The Dutch public were outraged by the mutiny. The government seized the opportunity to shut down the Naval union in 1933. It also sent 165 of The Seven Provinces crew to jail for 715 years.
Unionism fell rapidly out of fashion in Europe in the late 1930s with the rise of fascism. It was not until a year after World War II ended that the military union could be formerly reestablished to help its members fight for better conditions.