For people receiving unemployment benefits is easier to volunteer. Henceforth, unemployed people can volunteer to work for example, in a sports club or festival when the tasks can be done by volunteers.
Lodewijk Asscher Minister of Social Affairs said in the Parliament on Thursday that he will make the rules less strict. The Court had previously insisted about this.
The principle is that a person can volunteer as long as it does not lead to displacement of paid work. However, the UWV agency suggests more flexibility about this.
Now someone's benefit can be cut if the volunteering position is done by a paid worker somewhere else in the country.
In the future, UWV will not assess anymore whether national level displacement occurs or not, but it will check the organization in question. So there are clubs where the bartender is paid, and there are clubs where that place has always been occupied by a volunteer. That keeps UWV in mind for the future.
With regards to events that are mainly supported by volunteers, such as sporting events and festivals, unemployed can work as volunteers even receiving benefits.
Asscher could not estimate how much disadvantage suffer those unemployed because of the strict regulations. “The Netherlands has more than five million volunteers. My concern is that it involves lot of people."
The Labour Minister said in the Parliament that volunteering is a great value to society. It preserves and strengthens social cohesion, according to him. "Restrictive rules” should therefore be reduced, even rules for unemployment benefits, he says. "Everyone has the freedom to act as a volunteer, people who temporarily rely on unemployment benefits." Moreover, Asscher finds that doing volunteering can help unemployed to build a network and it keeps them active among people.
The new measures should enter in action in autumn.
The NOCNSF welcomes the relaxation of rules for unemployed people with benefits who want to work as a volunteer. "Only just in sports we work with 1.2 million volunteers," said Geert Slot, NOCNSF spokesman. "Before, once a month we received a notification reporting that a volunteering association could not accept more volunteers. The new legislation prevents that."
Finally, Slot does not know how many volunteers encounter these problems, but he estimates that it comes to thousands of people. NOCNSF is there to ensure that the new rules do not have "improper" use. The premise is that a volunteer should do only volunteering if it does not displace paid work, says Slot.