Another element that led to the breakdown of the right-wing coalition was the limited but important rise of combativity of sections of the workers movement and the growing political awareness of parts of the trade union movement. Seven years of CDA-VVD government have led to a drastic redistribution of income. Huge amounts of money have been transferred from the majority of workers to the benefit of profits and high incomes. People on social security have been particularly hard hit. In seven years profits have tripled and reached a level where some employers are beginning to fear a "backlash against business"
Contract with employers' organization
In 1982, when the present leader of the social democratic party was still the chairman of the main trade union federation he signed a contract with the chairman of the employers organization. The trade union leadership agreed to limit wage increases to allow profits to rise again, in exchange for promises that these higher profits would be used to create more jobs. These jobs of course never materialized, and over the years the results of the sell out 12 have become clear to growing numbers of workers. As a consequence workers and trade union leaders are less and less inclined to limit wage demands, now that everyone can see how much profits have risen. In the last twelve months nurses and other groups have launched struggles for a higher income, more jobs and against excessive workloads. Many of these struggles have achieved partial success. Today employers fear what they call a "wage wave", ", which may threaten their "profit wave"
The possibility of a change of coalition after the elections scheduled for 1990, was therefore already being discussed among employers and in leading circles of the Christian Democratic Party before the disagreements that led to the fall of the government appeared. It is a not very well kept secret that prime minister Lubbers, employer and one of the more then 27,000 millionaires in the country, is himself in favour of a coalition with the social democrats, to avoid wage demands and to make it easier to get workers to pay for investments that are necessary to do something about the destruction of the environment. Lubbers says the PvdA has changed a lot and has become more "reasonable". . He is not afraid that there will be a repetition of their so-called "big spender" policies of the seventies.
The right-wing liberals have lost fourteen seats in two successive elections, both after a period in which they were in government. Nine of those seats have gone to the Christian democrats. The CDA grew unexpectedly in 1986 and this year it was able to maintain its number of seats and remain the biggest party. The Christian democrats are overwhelmingly the dominant force on the right. They have managed to build a strong and stable electoral base.
Support for the CDA is today much less based on Christian ideology than before, although that still is a reason to vote for Lubbers for most CDA voters. But the CDA also gets support from those with middle and high incomes, who are certain that the fact that they are doing well is a direct result of Lubbers' economic policies.
Non-bellevers vote for Lubbers
The number of non-believers voting for the Christian democrats has been growing since the beginning of the eighties. Only one percent of the membership of the CDA are non-believer. But in the last elections fourteen percent of non-believers — 450,000 persons, worth almost 8 seats — voted for Lubbers. That was again an increase in comparison with 1986.