The cabinet wants to end the special status for civil servants which allows them to refuse to be placed in a new department or moved from national to local government, the Financieele Dagblad reports on Monday.

The paper bases its claims on sources in The Hague, and says the government also wants to make it possible to second civil servants to the private sector. At the moment, civil servants can only be given a different job on a voluntary basis.
Ministers also want to stop the automatic top-up of salaries of civil servants who agree to be down-graded.
The cabinet has agreed to save €800m on the government apparatus and 15,000 of the 123,000 civil service jobs are at stake, the paper says.
Unions and the government are currently at loggerheads about a new pay and conditions agreement. The government wants to freeze civil service salaries while the unions want a 2% rise backdated to the beginning of 2011.