News item | 20-06-2025 | 15:20
Minister Van Hijum of Social Affairs and Employment demands 4 sectors that they take measures in the short term to combat abuses with temporary workers. An exploration shows that in the meat, cleaning, transport and cultivation sector there is a relatively high risk of violating labor laws. The exploration also shows that the meat sector demonstrably there is systematic and widespread abuses.
For sectors where demonstrable systematic abuses are taking place and no improvement can be seen, the cabinet is preparing an out and hiring ban as a stick. A general administrative order will be drawn up for this and this can take effect at the earliest in one year. A new cabinet can consider whether the input and loan ban is actually being introduced.
Minister Van Hijum: “Everyone who works in the Netherlands deserves an honest, healthy and safe workplace. I find the outlined image in the exploration of labor disputes in a number of sectors very worrying. I therefore expect that they will take concrete measures to better protect employees in their sectors and that is why I will not start any of the cabinet. an input and loan ban. “
When establishing a sectoral input and loan ban, employers are no longer allowed to hire employees through an employment agency. This ensures that the number of people they will hire themselves will rise sharply and that the number of abuses is expected to decrease.
Outcomes Exploration
The figures show that there are certain specific sectors that have a (considerably) increased risk of violating labor laws. These risks to violating labor laws are highest in the meat sector.
In comparison with other sectors, parts of the (broad) cleaning, transport and cultivation sector have also been found a relatively high risk of violating labor laws. Here too, there appears to be a relatively high percentage of violations of labor laws, such as not paying the statutory minimum wage. However, the violations in the cleaning, transport and cultivation sectors cannot be demonstrated as concentrated as in slaughter. This means that the violations are not high in all places in these sectors and is currently insufficiently clear whether the abuses are actually widespread and systematic within these sectors.
Agreements are made with the employers in the aforementioned sectors to quickly reduce the abuses. They want to take concrete measures to prevent abuses in their sectors. For example, agreements are made about extra enforcement by private parties in these sectors. Sectors themselves will also strengthen the standards that prevent violations of labor laws. For example, this can be agreements in collective agreements about the number of permanent people and about compliance.
The minister writes that it is up to the sector to make serious work on improving the situation of workers in the coming year.