Foreign workers should be offered permanent contracts to reduce job-related accidents and flexible work in some sectors should be banned altogether, the work safety council OVV has said in a report.

Nine out of 10 foreign workers in low-skilled jobs has a temporary contract and they are more often involved in accidents due to an accumulation of factors, a labour inspectorate report showed last year.

Some 200,000 migrant workers, mostly from eastern and central Europe, are currently “in a precarious position” the OVV said.

Isolation, inadequate housing and job insecurity all contribute to a lack of rest, which increases their chance of accidents at work. Workers often do not know their rights and workers who are injured on the job have to go home to seek medical help.

The OVV accuses employers and jobs agencies of being less concerned about the safety of workers in “throwaway jobs”.

Employers’ organisations such as farmers’ organisation LTO, builders’ association Bouwend Nederland and the meat sector’s organisation Centrale Organisatie voor de Vleessector must take responsibility, the agency said. If they don’t, it argued, the social affairs minister should ban flexible work in these sectors.

“We are talking about businesses with a reputation to hold up. This is not how they should treat temporary workers,” OVV chairman Chris van Dam told broadcaster NOS.

Workers often will not report unsafe circumstances because they are afraid to lose their jobs, and their job-related accommodation. It is up to the labour inspectorate to act “more decisively and authoritatively” to tackle foreign workers’ working conditions, the OVV said.

Economists and the chief of the government’s labour inspectorate have called for a rethink on the Dutch economy to reduce the demand for often low-skilled foreign labour.

In particular farming, the logistics sector and the meat industry have come under fire for contributing little to the economy but relying on low cost workers.

A major report commissioned by the government and published in 2020 made 50 recommendations for improving the situation of people coming to the Netherlands from abroad to work in greenhouses or in the meat industry.