Building firms fake bankrupties to sack permanent staff: union

An increasing number of building companies are going bankrupt in order to get rid of permanent staff, only to start up in business again using the same people as freelancers, the AD reports on Tuesday, quoting union officials.


In addition, by going bankrupt, the building firms do not have to pay redundancy packages, the paper points out.
‘Building firms are in trouble. Competition is murderous and employers want just one thing – cheaper personnel,’ Wilco Veldhorst of the FNV building sector union told the paper.
Wage costs
Using freelancers allows companies to cut wage costs and get rid of workers when there is nothing to do, the union says.
The building sector organisation told the paper it is not aware the practice is widescale, adding that ‘as employers, we do not support it’.
The number of people working for themselves as independent contractors has shot up over the past ten years, from 200,000 in 2002 to 728,000 in 2012, according to the national statistics office CBS.

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