What about the zero-hour employment contract?

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In the Netherlands it is possible to agree on a zero-hour contract between employer and employee.

Zero-hour contract

A zero-hour contract ís an employment contract. In the contract is only not mentioned and therefore not agreed upon when and how often an employee is called for work and actually will work. Instead, the contract states that the obligation to perform the work is postponed until the on-call employee / employee is called by the employer to work. This may mean that an employer has 30 hours of work to offer in one week and the other week just 5 hours. This also means that an employee will get paid in one week for 30 hours and the other week for just 5 hours. If no work is done, for example due to illness of the employee, no wages need to be paid.

A zero-hour contract is usually entered into for a definite period and offers the employer a high degree of flexibility. However, a fixed-term zero-hour contract can automatically transition to an indefinite contract of employment over time. Exactly as can happen with a 'regular' employment contract according to Dutch law. Also, a zero-hour contract can ultimately transition into a much larger fixed hour scope than those zero-hours stated in the contract. This is due to the legal presumption of the scope of the working hours, as stated in Dutch Law. This stipulates that as soon as an employment contract has lasted for a minimum of 3 months, the agreed scope of working hours is expected to be equal to the number of hours worked on average in these previous 3 months.

The consequences can be that if you, as an employer, employ an employee based on a zero-hour employment contract, you are still bound to an employment contract with a larger scope of hours than those zero hours. This means that, as an employer, you have to pay for that larger scope of hours, even if you cannot provide the employee these hours of work, or if the employee is ill.

The law of the Netherlands does, however, offer an opportunity to exclude this obligation to pay wages for hours not worked for a maximum of 6 months, or longer based on a collective agreement. This exclusion must be explicitly mentioned in the employment contract.

In order to maximize the flexibility of employing employees without the obligation to pay wages for hours not worked as much as possible, it is important to include a provision in the zero hour employment contract and to call the employee as irregularly as possible for showing up at work.

Would you like more information about a zero-hour contract? Or do you want to exchange your thoughts about other aspects of labour law, get in contact with the lawyers of WiseMen.