On 9 April 2018 the gov­ern­ment presen­ted the inten­ded amend­ments regard­ing Dutch labor and employ­ment law. The bill is called Labor mar­ket in bal­ance (in Dutch: “Wet Arbeids­markt in bal­ans”). The main pro­posed changes are the fol­low­ing.

Dis­missal law

Cur­rently, per­mis­sion to dis­miss an employ­ee requires that one of the restrict­ive dis­missal grounds is fully met. The con­sequence is that dis­missal due to per­son­al cir­cum­stances of employ­ees is chal­len­ging. To obtain approv­al to dis­miss an employ­ee, the employ­er is required to make a very well-doc­u­mented request.

One of the pro­posed changes is to make it pos­sible to dis­miss an employ­ee on the basis of a com­bin­a­tion of dif­fer­ent per­son­al cir­cum­stances. This makes it easi­er for employ­ers to dis­miss employ­ees on per­son­al cir­cum­stances. In cases of a dis­missal by com­bin­ing per­son­al cir­cum­stances an employ­ee will be entitled to claim (addi­tion­al) com­pens­a­tion, i.e. half the trans­ition­al com­pens­a­tion at most.

Pro­ba­tion­ary peri­od

At present, the max­im­um pro­ba­tion­ary peri­od is one to two months. The bill pro­poses amend­ments to make a longer pro­ba­tion­ary peri­od pos­sible. The pro­ba­tion­ary peri­od for employ­ment agree­ments entered into for an indef­in­ite peri­od of time is exten­ded from two months to five months. A new pro­ba­tion­ary peri­od can be agreed for employ­ees at the same employ­er, if clearly dif­fer­ent skills and/or respons­ib­il­it­ies are required from the employ­ee.

Use of fixed-term employ­ment agree­ments

Cur­rently, the employ­ee may be fixed-term employed for two years before the employ­ment agree­ment con­verts into an employ­ment agree­ment for an indef­in­ite peri­od. The bill pro­poses to make pos­sible to have an employ­ee work­ing for three years on the basis of fixed-term agree­ments. Please note that a max­im­um of three employ­ment agree­ments entered into for a cer­tain peri­od of time may fol­low each oth­er. The fourth employ­ment agree­ment is deemed to have been entered into for an indef­in­ite peri­od of time.

Trans­ition­al com­pens­a­tion

Cur­rently, the enti­tle­ment for a com­pens­a­tion pay­ment arises after 24 months of employ­ment. In addi­tion, accru­al of the trans­ition­al com­pens­a­tion is more favor­able for employ­ees with a longer employ­ment.

The bill pro­poses that the enti­tle­ment to a trans­ition­al com­pens­a­tion is estab­lished imme­di­ately upon com­mence­ment of employ­ment. Anoth­er pro­pos­al is that the accru­al of the trans­ition­al com­pens­a­tion is the same for every employ­ee regard­less of the length of the employ­ment. In addi­tion, for small employ­ers an arrange­ment will be put in place to com­pensate the trans­ition­al com­pens­a­tion when they have to ter­min­ate their busi­ness due to retire­ment and/or ill­ness of employ­ees.

Payroll

Employ­ees work­ing for an organ­iz­a­tion on a payroll basis are entitled to the same con­di­tions as the employ­ees (dir­ectly) employed by that organ­iz­a­tion, except for pen­sion enti­tle­ments.

On-call employ­ees

The bill pro­poses oblig­a­tions for the use of “on-call employ­ees”. Employ­ers are required to call employ­ees in writ­ing at least four days in advance. Employ­ees do not have to show up if the call is made in a short­er peri­od of time. If the employ­er ter­min­ates the call four days or less in advance, employ­ees are entitled to the salary for the peri­od for which the employ­ees were called.