The biggest Dutch trade union federation FNV has ruled out making any more agreements with employers about relaxing Dutch rules on redundancy, the Telegraaf said on Thursday. Deputy chairman Mariette Patijn told the paper that the union is prepared to talk about encouraging employers to take on more permanent staff but that there will be no general agreement on labour market reform. 'Everything gets lumped together and we are not going to make any changes to agreements which employers have already signed,' she said. 'Changing the rules on redundancy will only lead to more flexible contracts.' The paper said 40% of the sector-wide pay and conditions agreements struck between the unions and employers this year include clauses on increasing employee security. In addition, wages have risen by an average 1.7%. Nevertheless, Patijn said many workers have not benefited from the pay rise. 'People on zero hour contracts, people on call-out contracts and temporary employees still have a far too low wage,' she said.  More >

A large proportion of the Netherlands’ growing pool of freelancers and self-employed workers don’t pay any tax on their income, because of tax breaks, the Volkskrant said at the weekend. The paper used an analysis by the national statistics office CBS into freelancer income, based on figures from 2014. The paper said that the range of tax breaks open to freelancers means they don’t pay tax on the first €24,000 of their earnings, almost four times as much as a regular worker. Of the 849,000 registered as self-employed in 2014, 40%, or 314,000 people, paid no tax on their earnings, the Volkskrant said. Of them, 105,000 had other income from a regular part-time job. Leiden professor Koen Caminda told the paper that freelancers get higher tax breaks than regular workers because they have to pay for their own pensions and insurance against illness and unemployment. However, ‘while the higher costs are an argument in favour of paying less tax,’ the difference did not have to be as large as it is, he said. However, Denis Maessen, who chairs a lobby group for the self employed, said the blame should be laid at the door of the government and employers who had sacked people and then welcomed them back as freelancers.  More >

A special hotline for reporting pregnancy-related discrimination has received 550 complaints in its first two weeks, reports the Dutch human rights organisation. It says that it is ‘a big problem’ in the jobs market that pregnant women and new mothers are treated unlike others, saying that so many reports in a short space of time underlines the problem. It manifests, reports NOS, in a contract not being renewed or holiday required to be taken in place of maternity leave, for example. The organisation – the College voor de Rechten van de Mens – believes 65,000 women are discriminated against each year in the Netherlands due to pregnancy. It started a telephone hotline for women to report their claims on 22 May, which has had calls mostly from women with flexible and temporary contracts.  More >

Unemployment in the Netherlands is falling while the number of job vacancies grows, shrinking the number of jobless per vacancy to 2.7, the national statistics office CBS said on Friday. A year ago, there were 3.9 people without work for every vacancy. However, before the start of the economic crisis, the figure was just 1.4. All parts of the country are benefiting from the surge in job vacancies, the CBS said. The growth has been sharpest in Zeeland, where the number of available jobs rose 40%. There are now just 1.8 jobless per vacancy in Zeeland and Utrecht. In Groningen, by contrast, there are four unemployed people for every vacancy. The construction and education sectors have the most jobs on offer in the  northern province.   More >