In the Parliament letter dated Monday 3 April 2023, Social Affairs and Employment Minister Van Gennip further informed the House of Representatives about the progress and elaboration of the labour market reform package announced by the minister on 5 July 2022.
Among other things, the cabinet wants to ensure that workers are offered more security. Van Gennip writes in the parliamentary letter, "Security in work gives working people a grip on working life, ensures that they can take steps in life-cycle stages and combine work and private life." In addition, the government wants to ensure that (especially small) entrepreneurs become more agile. The labour market package therefore includes measures to support small entrepreneurs and encourage entrepreneurship. Self-employed people must be able to protect themselves better and it must become possible for employers to be more flexible in their business.
In order to offer more security to working people, the government intends to implement the following changes, among others:
- Self-employed people must be given the opportunity to take out affordable disability insurance.
- Employees with on-call contracts should be given more income and schedule security. This means that on-call contracts, such as zero-hours and the current min- /max contracts, will be abolished (for schoolchildren and students, however, it will remain possible to work under the current on-call contracts). Instead of the current on-call contracts, there should be a basic contract in which employees are given certainty about the minimum number of hours they are deployed and more certainty about the minimum income in a period. However, workers in a basic contract must remain available for a number of hours above the minimum number of hours.
- Temporary workers should receive a more secure contract from the temporary employment agency sooner (after 52 weeks worked) and be entitled to a permanent contract sooner.
- Temporary work should also be temporary. The current break period applicable to chains of temporary contracts (6 months) will be dropped. Instead, an administrative expiry period of 5 years will apply. With this, the government wants to put an end to so-called revolving door constructions.
Other measures discussed in this parliamentary letter, among others to increase agility for (small) entrepreneurs, are:
- The introduction of a scheme (Crisis Scheme for Employee Retention) to deal with crises and calamities that fall outside the regular entrepreneurial risk.
- Ensuring that employers are offered earlier clarity on the reintegration of long-term sick employees (in the second track). According to Van Gennip, small and medium-sized employers (up to and including 100 employees) should already be given clarity on the possibility of permanently replacing an employee after one year of illness so that they can continue their business operations.
- Preventing false self-employment. The government also wants to improve and strengthen enforcement on false self-employment in the short term.
Continued labour market reform
In this parliamentary letter, Minister Van Gennip indicated that she intends to turn the announced measures into legislation in the short term (around summer 2023). She wishes to be able to submit the legislation to the House of Representatives in spring 2024. Naturally, we will keep an eye on developments for you and should you have any questions, for example on the consequences of these measures for you or your organisation, please contact our Employment Law Team.
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