Dutch MPs Approve New Rules for Flex Workers, with End to Zero-Hour Contracts

The Dutch lower house of parliament, the Tweede Kamer, has passed a long-awaited bill aimed at giving flexible workers more security over their income and hours. The Wet Meer Zekerheid Flexwerkers ("Law on More Certainty for Flex Workers") was approved on Tuesday with a large majority. It will now go to the Senate, the Eerste Kamer, before becoming law.

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Why it matters

The Netherlands has, by far, the largest share of workers on flexible contracts in the European Union: around 2.7 million people, or nearly three in every ten workers. The government has long argued that this leaves too many people without the predictability they need to plan their lives, from arranging childcare to taking out a mortgage.

The bill is part of a wider labour market reform that originated with a 2020 report by the Borstlap commission, was kick-started by former CDA labour minister Karien van Gennip in 2023, and was finally pushed through the Tweede Kamer by current social affairs minister Hans Vijlbrief (D66). It has the backing of both the major unions, FNV and CNV, and the main employers' organisations.

End of zero-hour contracts

The most visible change is the end of the zero-hour and on-call contract. These will be replaced by what the bill calls a "bandbreedtecontract" (bandwidth contract): the employer and employee agree on a minimum number of hours that the worker is paid for and scheduled to work each week, while the maximum can be no more than 130 percent of that minimum. Workers can refuse extra calls above the agreed bandwidth, and an employer who structurally calls in more hours must offer a contract with more hours.

Students, school pupils and people who have reached the state pension age (AOW) will still be allowed to work on on-call contracts; the latter exception was added during the parliamentary debate.

Stricter "revolving door" rules

The bill also tightens the so-called ketenregeling, the chain of temporary contracts. After three temporary contracts with the same employer, the employee gets a longer cooling-off period before a new temporary contract can be offered. During the debate, the Tweede Kamer reduced that cooling-off period from the originally proposed five years to three. The intention is that genuinely temporary work remains possible, while long-term "revolving door" structures around a permanent job become harder to maintain.

Equal treatment for temp agency workers

For people working through temp agencies and similar intermediaries, including uitzendkrachten and gedetacheerden, the bill brings several changes. They must be given at least equivalent terms of employment as workers in regular employment at the company they are sent to, not only in pay but across all conditions. Phase A of agency work, in which an employee can be sent home from one day to the next, is shortened from 78 to 52 weeks, and the rules for the subsequent phase B are also tightened. A worker can no longer be kept in temporary-agency contracts for more than three years before being entitled to a permanent contract.

The Tweede Kamer also added a so-called "stop button," giving the social affairs minister the power to intervene if there is structural underpayment in the temp agency sector, for example by limiting the room for collective labour agreements to deviate from the equal-pay rule.

Reactions

Minister Vijlbrief called the vote an important step. "With this bill, people get more certainty about how many hours they work and how much they earn. If you know that, you can make plans for the future. And that certainty also creates space for learning and development, which is good for both employee and employer."

The temp agency industry, represented by ABU and NBBU, said the law went too far on some points, in particular the "stop button" and the equal-pay rules, which they argue overrule existing agreements between unions and employers. The general employers' association AWVN has separately warned that the cumulative effect of the new rules and stricter enforcement against bogus self-employment may make it too difficult for companies to maintain a flexible workforce.

What happens next

The bill now goes to the Senate, where the social affairs and employment committee will discuss procedure on 19 May. Minister Vijlbrief has asked the senators to handle the proposal before the summer recess of 2026, in part because the bill is being used to replace a milestone in the Dutch Recovery and Resilience Plan (HVP). To avoid a possible loss of EU funding worth several hundreds of millions of euros, the law must be published in the official gazette by 31 August 2026, and the section on equal terms for temp agency workers must come into effect by 31 December 2026. The rest of the changes, including the bandwidth contracts and tightened chain rules, are scheduled to take effect on 1 January 2028.

For many of the 2.7 million Dutch workers with a flexible contract, the practical difference will be felt long before then: parts of the new rules, including shorter phases for temp agency work and equal pay, are already in the collective labour agreements of 2026.