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Dutch Courts ruled on the classification of platform workers and government advisory group view

  • The classification of platform workers is unclear in the Netherlands, despite recent Court decisions and a report from the Labour Inspectorate
  • Recently, an advisory bipartite Committee highlighted the “need for a political and policy response in the short term to this discussion”

Over the past two years, Dutch Courts settled the cases filed by the trade unions FNV and CNV on the employment status of workers of different platforms companies. For the case brought by FNV against the company Deliveroo (a food delivery company) in 2019, and Helpling (the largest cleaning/domestic work platform in Europe) in the same year, the Courts stated that platform workers were in fact employees due to their high degree of dependence on the delivery app (Deliveroo case) or that the company was in reality not a digital bulletin for matching clients and cleaners and therefore should no longer receive a fee for each hour worked by the platform worker.

Following these cases, the Social and Economic Council (‘Sociaal-Economische Raad’ – SER) in October 2020 delivered to the Minister of Social Affairs a report on “How does the platform economy work?”. The advisory group SER is bipartite, with representatives from the trade unions and employers, but also independent experts. The report explored the practice of platform economy, opportunities and risks for platform companies and workers and the enforcement of the law for cases of bogus self-employment. In its conclusions SER underlines the great diversity among platforms, workers and working conditions, which make it difficult to create an unambiguous image. It also highlights the lack of clarity on the working status of platform workers and calls out the “need for a political and policy response in the short-term to this discussion”.

At the end of 2020, the union FNV filed a complaint against the company Temper, that is a digital labour platform for the hospitality industry, requesting the Court to consider it an employment agency that “must comply with the legal obligations of temporary employment agencies, such as continuing to pay in the event of illness and paying vacation days”.

While the case is still to be settled in Court, in February 2021 the Labour Inspectorate (Inspectie SZW) held that Temper is not broker for self-employed but an employment agency, meaning that its workers should be treated as agency workers. This statement will not have direct repercussions on the status of Temper workers, that should in any case take legal action if they want to be recognised as employees.