2022

Commemorating Jan Willem de Jong

He has been a passionate and adamant trade unionist, working on issues such as sexual and gender diversity. But his trade union activities also included representing his colleagues in workers' boards in the psychiatric institutions in which he worked.
At one time he was secretary-general of the workers' council, in another period he was chair of the workers' council of one of the main employers in Amsterdam.
Jan Willem de Jong (born June 7, 1955) has passed away on February 18th, 2022, after a painful struggle with tongue cancer.

As a psychiatric nurse, he focussed on quality in public services.
One of his successes was the development of protocols and procedures for dealing with intimacy within a psychiatric hospital. But he also warned the directors whenever he considered the quality of the care in the institutions at risk. Unfortunately, his warnings were in vain and - in a period in which he was ill - the understaffed situation at his workplace lead to the death of a patient and the closing of this institution.
De Jong has been an active volunteer in the so-called Lesbian and Gay Group of the Dutch trade union for the public sector Abvakabo; in this role he was one of the main coordinators of the international conference on LGBT trade union activism in 1998 in Amsterdam.