Continued payment of wages

Are you temporarily unable to provide your employees with work? Or you do not call in your employees in time when there is work? You must still pay them their wages. In some situations it is possible to exclude this obligation, but only temporarily. 

Obligation to pay 

You are obliged to pay your employee(s) if: 

• There is less work than normal and this is at your account and risk. For example, when an order has been cancelled.
• There is enough work, but you fail to call in your on-call employees on time.
• You have called in your on-call employees, but they are unable to work because of technical issues at the workplace.

Who do you have to pay? 

The obligation to pay your employees’ wages if work is unavailable applies to: 

• regular employees
• temporary employees
• on-call employees
• payrollers

No obligation to continue payment 

You do not have to continue paying wages if you have excluded the obligation to continue to pay wages in advance. You arrange for this in the employment contract. However, you can only exclude the obligation for the first 6 months of the contract. After 6 months you may only do so if it is part of the collective labour agreement (cao). 

Please note: you cannot exclude sick pay. 

Other exemptions to the obligation 

The obligation to continue to pay wages also does not apply if your employee:

• is on strike
• is absent without permission or proper reason (unauthorised absence)
• is regularly late for work
• is held in detention 

How much do you have to pay? 

Regular and temporary workers are entitled to their regular pay. For on-call workers payment depends on their type of contract: 

• in a zero-hours contract you pay at least 3 hours per call-up, unless the contract is for less than 15 hours per week and you have not made agreements about working hours. Or if there is a pre-agreement (voorovereenkomst, in Dutch) in place where the agreement only applies when the on-call worker accepts the assignment.
• in a min-max contract you pay at least the guaranteed or minimum hours agreed in the contract in the first 6 months. After 6 months you must also pay for the hours you do not cancel or change in time. 

Insurance or compensation possible? 

You cannot insure yourself against the obligation to continued payment. However, in some situations, the Employee Insurance Agency (Uitvoeringsinstituut Werknemersverzekeringen, UWV) may support you. This could be the case if, for example, the lack of work is the result of extreme weather conditions or because of a temporary transport ban.