Minister of Social Affairs and Employment Eddy van Hijum: “When you are certain of your income and working hours, it brings peace. It creates space to make plans for the future. Perhaps to buy a house or start a family. The Netherlands has an incredibly high number of people with an insecure employment contract, much more than the European average. Many people also work through temp agencies in the Netherlands. And we see that this leads to abuses. For some companies and sectors, insecure labor has become a business model. With this bill, we directly increase the security of peoples existence. And we also make it more difficult to exploit people through revolving door or temp agency constructions.”

Temporary Workers

People working through a temp agency will have the right to at least the same working conditions as those employed regularly. The phases of temporary work in which you can be dismissed every day or do not know how many hours you can work will also be shortened from one and a half years to one year. This way, the bill ensures more security for temporary workers and less exploitation through temporary agency constructions, for example, of labor migrants.

Revolving Door Constructions

The premise of the new law is that temporary contracts are only intended for temporary work. After a temporary contract, employees should receive a permanent contract more quickly. Under the current law, after three temporary contracts, there can be no temporary contract for six months. To combat revolving door constructions, this period will be replaced in the new law by a period of 5 years. Also, exceptions to this rule can only be made to a limited extent in the collective labor agreement.

Call Contracts

Instead of zero-hour contracts, there will be a bandwidth contract. This will stipulate a minimum and a maximum number of hours, with the difference being a maximum of 130%. This means that with a minimum of 10 hours, the maximum is 13 hours. Calls that exceed the maximum may be refused by the employee. And if there is a consistent increase in hours worked, a contract must be offered with a higher number of hours. This change ensures more certainty for the employee regarding income and the hours for which you are scheduled. The law does provide an exception for side jobs of young people, students, and scholars; they can continue to work on a call contract.

Entry into Force

Now that the bill has been submitted to the House of Representatives, the discussion can begin. If both the House of Representatives and the Senate agree, the law will come into effect on January 1, 2027. The part concerning equal pay for temporary workers may come into effect a year earlier, on January 1, 2026.

Together with several other bills, this proposal forms a reform of the Dutch labor market that aims to provide more security for employees and more flexibility for entrepreneurs. These proposals arise from agreements made by the cabinet in 2023 with trade unions and employers and are based on the report of the Borstlap committee from 2020 and the SER advice from 2021.