Join FME!
The helping hand
The FME-CWM Association – FME for short – is an organisation
that represents employers and businesses in the technological
industry. We give a helping hand to our 2,500 member companies in
their conduct of business. FME works for companies of different
sizes. Eighty percent of our members have fewer than 100 employees
and 50 percent fewer than 50. But our members also include
multinationals.
Membership
FME guarantees a wide network of industrial companies driven by
technology. This structure enables entrepreneurs to meet each other
and to cooperate to the benefit of each individual company.
Joining FME offers you the following advantages:
1. Tailor-made advice delivered at your office
for questions and problems that you encounter in your day-to-day
operations.
2. Fast answers to your questions via the FME
Service Desk, e-mail or on our comprehensive website.
3. Clear and practical information relevant to
your company, provided via the FME website, e-mail and various
specialised journals.
4. Protection of your interests at the regional,
national and European level.
5. Identification of trends and developments via
market surveys and economic statistics.
6. Substantial discounts for your company and
your employees at more than 75 contracted suppliers.
Solid support
You are an entrepreneur working in the technological industry in
the Netherlands. Your company operates in a complex, open and
international market. You focus as far as possible on doing
business, but the organisational nuts and bolts often consume a
disproportionately large amount of your time. Solid support from a
trusted adviser is extremely useful in such a situation. You need
somebody who is thoroughly familiar with the problems in your
branch of industry and who understands the issues that matter to
your company.
Solution-minded FME Service Desk
The FME Service Desk offers FME members initial practical
support. Our employees are there to help you from 08:00 to 17:30
hrs. They resolve 80 percent of all questions immediately and 15
percent within two hours. The goal in all instances is to provide
members with a solution within 24 hours. The FME Service Desk is
also the principal gateway to contacts with FME specialists.
Wide range of experts and practical tools
FME has numerous specialists who can assist you. They include
our own lawyers, consultants and interim managers who work
throughout the Netherlands. All are experts who can act as a
sounding board for managers. They provide advice to management and
they can carry out projects or temporarily give companies
management support.
We have a great deal of information available about standard
solutions that yield excellent results. We have also developed a
large number of practical tools. They include the FME conditions of
delivery and other model contracts, employee benefits studies, a
manual for the EU Machines Directive, workbooks for health and
safety at work and environmental protection, price review clauses
and a comprehensive range of resources related to job grading.
Protecting interests effectively at all levels
With 2,500 companies, 225,000 employees and turnover totalling
around €60 billion, the FME members form a significant economic
bloc. An excellently informed lobbying apparatus protects in the
most effective way possible the collective interests of the
industry and also those of individual FME members – in Brussels and
in The Hague, but also in the province and in your municipality.
FME is affiliated to the Dutch employers’ organisation VNO-NCW and
to the European umbrella organisations for the technological
industry (Orgalime and CEEMET).
Distinctive specialised knowledge
FME is best known as an employers’ organisation. We have a
wealth of knowledge of employee benefits, personnel matters and
organisational issues. One-third of our members adhere to the
collective labour agreement for the metal and electrical/electronic
industry, which is concluded by FME. About one thousand companies
fall under the collective labour agreement for the metal and
engineering industry. We possess complete knowledge of this
collective labour agreement, and also of the collective labour
agreement concluded for the technical wholesale sector. Companies
increasingly wish to conclude their own collective labour
agreements, and FME also supports members covered by these
agreements.
But FME’s great strength is that it also operates in other fields
that require industry-specific knowledge, such as knowledge of
technology, operations, standardisation, international business and
the environment. We maintain this knowledge in order to protect our
members’ collective interests, but primarily as an individual
service to our membership. That is why FME stands out from many
other industry organisations.
By means of sector organisations FME watches over the specific
interests of groups of companies with the same kind of product or
market or with similar technology. These organisations arrange
meetings, congresses, fairs, lobbying and so on. The sector
organisations are entirely autonomous in principle. But they do
make intensive use of FME’s knowledge, networks and infrastructure.
Numerous benefits
FME members benefit from discount programmes established by the
FME procurement organisations. For the collective purchasing of
energy, for example, FME has set up an organisation called STENIM.
The Members Benefits Foundation purchases services and general
facility products, while the Technical Benefits Foundation gives
FME members access to substantial savings on technical products and
parts. Many companies easily earn back their FME membership fee
simply by using these savings programmes.
Committed to member companies
By working on all of these activities FME employees have
developed a special relationship with the companies that they
serve. Our staff can rightly be called fully-fledged Trusted
Partners of the technological industry – not only because of their
knowledge of branches of industry, but even more because of their
experience and their business-focused competences. FME is a
not-for-profit organisation of companies for companies, so our
central consideration is to promote the interests of our members
rather than those of the service provider.
More information
To learn more about what FME can do for you, contact us on T +31 79 353 11 00 or E info@fme.nl.
