Cabinet to stop employers docking foreign workers’ pay for rent

Employers will no longer be allowed to deduct rent from foreign workers’ minimum wage from July 2028, social affairs minister Hans Vijlbrief has told parliament.

Under current rules, employers and agencies can withhold up to 25% of the minimum wage – around €144 a week – to cover accommodation, provided the housing is certified.

The scheme is used mainly for the estimated 600,000 to 900,000 foreign workers in the Netherlands, most of them from Poland, Romania, Hungary and Ukraine, who work in meat processing, distribution centres and greenhouses.

Research by the ministry found employers regularly deduct the full 25% even when the quality of the housing does not justify it, Vijlbrief wrote in a letter to parliament on Thursday.

He said employers are using the deductions as a “business model” and told Nieuwsuur that too many people are being exploited.

Employers will still be able to provide housing, but will have to charge for it separately and at a fair price, the minister said. Ending deductions will also make it easier for inspectors to check whether workers are actually being paid minimum wage, he said.

The decision is the cabinet’s third on the issue in little over a year. Eddy van Hijum, former social affairs minister, proposed phasing out the deductions from January 2026, but his successor Mariëlle Paul of the VVD reversed that decision, arguing that workers would struggle to find housing without employer involvement.

Trade union federation FNV called the move a “perverse profit model at the expense of migrant workers”, and parliament has twice voted for the deductions to go.

Vijlbrief acknowledged that the ban will mean foreign workers will have to find their own accommodation amid the housing crisis. As a result, the ban will come with a rent protection bill, which has yet to reach parliament. Both are scheduled for July 1, 2028.

The measure is part of a wider package to tackle the exploitation of foreign workers, including a ban on temp agency staff in the meat industry, also from mid-2028. A long-delayed licensing system for staffing agencies is set to take effect in 2027.