The Dutch government is poised to adopt a proposal drawn up by the Party of Freedom that will severely curtail the power of trade unions. Currently sectoral pay deals in the Netherlands are negotiated with employer associations and then put to a vote of union members. The resulting pay scales are then applied to all companies operating within the sector. Under the revised rules, negotiated rates would have to be approved by the entire workforce in the sector concerned before they could be declared mandatory on all companies operating within it.