At the Personnel Negotiation Committee (POC) of Thursday 13 November 2025, the university board put on the agenda the discontinuation of the granting of gift vouchers and the cancellation of a small part of the eco vouchers. In total, this involves an amount of 36 euros per year that would no longer be awarded in this way. You can read the submitted note here (in Dutch).
The board refers to a dispute that has been going on for several months with the National Social Security Office, in which these vouchers do not appear to meet the conditions to be exempt from social security contributions and taxes. Correspondence about this was also submitted, and can be found here (in Dutch).
We take note of the findings by the NSSO. It goes without saying that the regulations must be applied correctly.
At the same time, we note that university management has been aware of this situation since the spring of 2025, but that the trade unions were only informed about it for the first time at the end of October, when it was put on the agenda at this POC. In all that time, no attempts were made to look for solutions to this problem together with the trade unions.
With its current proposal, the university is also reversing the commitments made during the negotiations for the introduction of these vouchers at the POC of 19 January 2023. At that time the negotiated proposal from management explicitly confirmed that if no tax-free extra-legal benefit was possible, the proposed amount would be granted through an addition to the salary.
The proposed abolition therefore received a unanimous disagreement from the three trade unions.