Employers in the Netherlands have found a new way to get around paying the new transition fee which took effect July 1. As it stands now, if an employer wishes to terminate an employment agreement that’s two or more years old, a mandatory transition allowance must be paid to the employee regardless of the reason for termination. This also includes employees who’ve been sick long-term, and it’s upsetting many employers. In retaliation, they’re keeping sick employees on board with the company in an unpaid status.
"Employers see it as highly unfair that they should give sick employees a severance payment after two years,” says Pascal Besselink, labor lawyer at DAS, a legal service provider. “Many complain of having paid wages to sick employees for two years without receiving anything in return - even after making every effort to get the sick employee back to work. The issue is worsened even further if the employee became ill because of something unrelated to work.”
As of July 1, employers can only request the dismissal of sick employees via the UWV, which now enforces the transition allowance. The allowance gets larger for employees that have worked with the company longer, so small businesses stand to suffer the most, as the transition allowance would be most expensive for them. Other larger corporations have long been rumored of hoarding their terminations and delaying payment of the transition allowance. The exact number of employers delaying payment of the transition allowance in this way is unknown.
"We know that companies think about this," says a spokesman with the UVW. “We do not know how it will turn out, but there are risks for the company. Such unpaid employees can later still report to work and companies then run the risk of having to keep a sick worker and even lay off a healthy, productive employee that had replaced them.
Source: Volkskrant / P&O Actueel