Union representative Henk van der Kolk has told Dutch public broadcaster NOS that negotiations between employers and the unions about raising the pensionable age by two years to 67 are deadlocked,
The Dutch cabinet decided in March that the retirement age must go up for economic reasons, but the unions and the employers were given until October to come up with an alternative.

The proposed measure is not popular, particularly among people in physically demanding jobs. The government says that people need to work longer in order to keep the national pension system affordable.

Mr Van der Kolk says the employers have broken their vow to look for a viable alternative to later pensioning. He says the employers were never going to cooperate. If the cabinet plan for retirement at 67 is pushed through, FNV is threatening to retaliate with steep wage demands in the collective labour term negotiations later this year.

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