Tens of thousands of foreign workers in the Netherlands are not included in the local authority population register BRP, leaving them more vulnerable to exploitation, according to research by the FNV trade union federation.

The union says some employment agencies actively discourage new arrivals from registering with their local council, even though registration is required for anyone staying longer than four months.

In some cases, workers who tried to register were intimidated or threatened with being sacked. Others did lose their jobs after it became known that they had registered, the union is quoted as saying by the NRC.

Workers who are not registered do not have tenancy rights either, so can be evicted from their homes, and it is harder for them to access healthcare.

Some contracts with seasonal workers even include clauses stating that they cannot register, Alina Bejan, a social worker with FairWork, told the paper.

The government plans to make employers and staffing agencies partly responsible for making sure that their workers are registered from January next year.

Improving registration was one of the main recommendations of a 2020 report led by former SP leader Emile Roemer on the position of the Netherlands’ low-skilled foreign workforce. So far very few of his recommendations have been acted upon.

Some 500,000 people from other EU countries work in Netherlands, mainly in farming, distribution centres, factories and the meat industry.

“I don’t want to suggest that nothing has been done,” Roemer told the Volkskrant in November last year. “But you cannot blame me for concluding that after five years, things are moving very slowly. And we are talking about major injustices which are happening every day.”