ABN AMRO pushes for 50% office attendance in collective bargaining

ABN AMRO wants its staff in the office at least half of the working week, and has made the demand part of its collective-bargaining (CAO) negotiations, according to Het Financieele Dagblad reporting carried across Dutch outlets in mid-August 2026. The proposal is an alternating pattern of two and three office days, with individual exceptions and a transition period running to 1 July 2027. Unions have offered an average of one office day and say the bank’s figure is too high.

Why this matters: Because the requirement is being routed through the CAO rather than imposed unilaterally, the outcome will set a reference point for the whole Dutch banking sector, not just one employer. For hybrid and remote workers the practical detail is the route itself: an attendance minimum agreed collectively is harder to reverse later than a policy a single company sets and can quietly drop. If you work under a Dutch CAO, read the office-days line before you sign, and raise it through your union while it is still on the table.

The push came in the same week that Norway’s DNB ended its fixed working-from-home days, placing European banks at the centre of the current return-to-office tightening. It sits awkwardly against the Netherlands’ own standing as one of Europe’s most remote-friendly economies, with Eurofound’s 2024 data putting Dutch occasional teleworking at 38%, among the highest in the EU.