New rules for employment contracts

A new European directive aims at making working conditions more transparent and predictable. The new directive will give employees more rights from 1 August 2022. What are the most important ones? Do employers have to change existing employment contracts immediately?

The new directive gives employees, including internationally seconded workers, not just more right to information about their working conditions, but also other rights. For example, there are stricter rules for statutory mandatory training; ancillary activities are, in principle, permitted. Below you can find an overview of these partly drastic changes.

Training

Employers are already required to give employees the opportunity to follow training if they cannot perform their work without such training. This regulation is extended with training that the employer must offer on the basis of the law or a collective labour agreement. It mainly concerns training in the area of safety and working conditions, such as maintaining professional skills. This may concern, for example, an emergency response training or the mandatory continuing training of commercial drivers. It does not include training to get professional qualifications.

Employers must not charge their employees for this mandatory training. Also, the time for training counts as working time and the training must, if possible, take place within normal working hours. Furthermore, a clause is void if it states that the employer may recover the costs of training from the employees or offset them against their salary. This also applies to clauses that have already been agreed upon. You can learn more about this topic in our next blog.

Unpredictable working hours

Information obligation

Does an employee work completely or for the most part unpredictable times? If this is the case, it must be clearly stated in the employment contract. It must also be stated:

1. For which number of hours payment is guaranteed;
2. What the pay will be for the extra hours worked by the employee;
3. The days and hours the employee can be required to work;
4. The minimum period between the call and the work performance. By law, this is at least 4 days, but this can be deviated from by collective labour agreement, provided that the period is at least 24 hours.

Request for permanent work

After 26 weeks of employment, an employee can request more predictable and secure working conditions. This is dealt with in an extension of the Flexible Work Act. Within one month, the employer has to react in writing and stating reasons to this request. If an employer has fewer than 10 employees, he/she has three months to react. If the employer does not react within these periods, the working conditions from the request of the employee will apply. For example, if the employee has asked for a fixed number of hours a week and does not want to work at night any longer. After a request has been made, the employee has to wait a year to make another request. If the reaction is the same as to the first request, an employer with fewer than 10 employees may also react orally.

Ancillary activities

Employers are no longer allowed to prohibit working for others outside of working hours, unless there is an objective justification to do so. Examples include the health of the employees if they work more hours than permitted by law, or activities that are not in accordance with the values of the employer. The employer does not need to state this justification in the employment contract.

Household help

A number of these regulations do not apply to household staff working for less than four days a week. It concerns the training obligation and being allowed to request more permanent employment conditions.

It remains to be seen whether these exceptions will last. A recent court decision ruled that excluding this group from payroll tax and social security contributions constitutes indirect discrimination, because in practice this mainly concerns women who work as a household help or carer for private individuals. In addition, the European directive already puts an end to the exception from the obligation to provide information which applies to this group. Various parties have, therefore, asked critical questions about this exception during the discussion of the legislative proposal that implements this directive, but so far the Dutch government holds on to the proposal. Since then, the European Court of Justice has ruled in a comparable Spanish matter that there is prohibited indirect discrimination. We are curious whether this will change the government’s point of view.

Extension of the prohibition of termination and prohibition on prejudicing

Employers are not allowed to terminate or prejudice employees because they make use of the changed and new sections of law.

Employment lawyers

Do you have any questions about the changes? Do you want us to amend your employment contracts and staff handbook to the new legislation? Please contact us. We will also be happy to assist you in disputes with your staff: