Social affairs minister Piet Hein Donner is amending his plans to reform redundancy law but is keeping those changes close to his chest, various papers report on Friday.

‘There is not a proposal, but the contours [of a plan],’ Donner told the Financieele Dagblad. ‘I have never given the impression that changes are not possible,’ he added. Neither Donner, nor prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende would speak of a cabinet crisis, the paper said.
Both referred to the queen’s speech at the opening of parliament in which ‘increasing participation in the jobs market through changing the rules’ was made a priority.
Labour MPs are opposed to Donner’s original proposal to scrap the legal check on redundancy plans and replace them with a retroactive procedure. Currently, job losses have to be approved either by the courts or the CWI unemployment office.