Public sector unions to hold 24-hour strike on Tuesday
Members of the socialist, Christian and liberal public sector unions (ACOD, ACV and VSOA) will be staging a 24-hour strike from midnight on Monday. The strike action will have a big impact on public transport with rail services already being hit from 10pm this evening. Bus, tram and metro services too will be impacted as will other public services, be they local, regional or federal. Here at the VRT the programme schedule on television and radio will be impacted as will our online output. Flandersnews.be will be publishing no articles tomorrow (Tuesday 31 May).
As during previous rail strikes, NMBS will be providing a minimum service. To see whether your train is running check on the rail companies website www.nmbs.be .
Similarly, the Brussels public transport company MIVB will provide a much-reduced service on some of its busiest routes. To find out if your service is running log on to MIVB’s website www.mivb.be.
For De Lijn (Flanders) and TEC (Wallonia) check the two regional public transport companies’ respective websites www.delijn.be and www.letec.be.
VRT unions to strike in protest at proposed job cuts
Here at the VRT a 24-hour strike has been called in protest at the job cuts that have been proposed by the Flemish public service broadcaster’s management in their “Transformation Plan”.
The plan proposes making 116 staff redundant, not replacing more than 50 others that leave through “natural wastage” and the outsourcing of the production of the soap opera ‘Thuis’ to a private contractor. The job cuts, that include a significant reduction in the number of those working on our non-Dutch language news sites, amount to around 10% of the total number of people currently employed at the VRT.
The VRT has been forced to make savings due to a reduction in the level of funding the public service broadcaster receives from the Flemish Government.