‘Justice for Janitors’ goes Dutch: The Possibilities and Limitations of an Organising Approach in the Netherlands

Since 2005, the Dutch trade union movement has taken up the strategy of „organising‟ to recruit new groups of workers and as a broader strategy for union renewal at the grassroots level. This approach has introduced a debate in the Dutch union movement about adopting more confrontational strategies – unusual in the Dutch context that has been referred to as an example of “corporatism par excellence” (Lehmbruch, 1979) or “responsive corporatism” (Hemerijck, 1995). This paper draws on empirical research, in the form of interviews and participant observation (from 2008-2011), to present a case study of a successful organising campaign in the Dutch cleaning sector and to discuss the short term and long-term effects of such a campaign.