ABN AMRO staff walk out over pay and a 50% office-attendance rule

Staff at ABN AMRO’s Diemen office stopped work from 11:00 to 15:00 on 5 November 2026, in a stalled collective-agreement (cao) dispute covering about 18,000 employees. The bank wants an average of 50% office time written into the agreement; the FNV union wants no more than one compulsory office day a week. Talks resume on 19 November and FNV has warned of further action (IamExpat; NL Times).

Why this matters

ABN AMRO is the third large Dutch employer in a fortnight trying to make office attendance a formal rule, after Booking.com and VodafoneZiggo (our report on the Booking.com ruling). The difference here is the route: putting attendance into a collective agreement makes it binding on everyone the agreement covers, which is why the union is resisting it so firmly.

Context

A survey of about 3,000 workers for FNV and the current-affairs programme Nieuwsuur, published on 9 November, found that more than half of Dutch home workers say their home and working lives are now too intertwined to go back to the office full time. None of the Netherlands’ 25 largest companies currently requires five office days (DutchNews).

The bank first set out the 50% target in August (our earlier report).

What to watch: the next round of talks on 19 November.