Dutch meat-sector labour now asks who controls the worker’s pay route.
At the end of a late shift, the manager of a small meat processor signs off the agency hours. The line has run, the order has gone out, and the invoice will arrive with names, hours and a rate. From the buyer’s side, the file can look tidy.
The signal has to become readable
On 16 June 2026, the Nederlandse Arbeidsinspectie reported a harder picture. Its Opsporingsdienst, under the authority of the Openbaar Ministerie, seized assets belonging to the shareholder of a staffing agency active in slaughtering and meat processing. Dutch bank accounts, land and real estate were seized, along with 20 German properties valued at about €2.4 million. The total seizure was estimated at about €3.3 million.
The official suspicion is specific. Migrant agency workers may not have received wages on their own bank accounts because account numbers in payroll records were changed. Wages were allegedly transferred to those accounts and then withdrawn in cash. The agency and shareholder are suspected of embezzling more than €2.1 million, with calculated unlawful benefit of about €4.5 million.
The legal case continues. The business signal is already on the desk.
The wage route matters more than the invoice
This is more than a story about one seized shareholder. For anyone buying labour through another company, it is a wage-route control warning. The agency invoice shows what the buyer was charged. The worker’s control over the wage route needs its own proof.
That distinction matters in meat processing. The Arbeidsinspectie’s 2025 programme report described the industry as largely dependent on agency workers, with frequent use of workers from Romania and Bulgaria. It also described underpayment, improper deductions, mass instant dismissals and poor, expensive housing, often in Germany. The message was direct: users of labour have to take onboarding, payment checks and housing checks seriously.
The March 2026 Arbeidsinspectie report on earning models around labour exploitation and serious disadvantage of migrant workers adds the wider pattern. It described no pay, too little pay, improper deductions, cash repayment of wages and cases where employers controlled bank accounts or bank cards.
For a small operator, governance becomes concrete here. Who can change a bank-account number? Who sees the change? Who confirms it with the worker? Who notices if the same pattern repeats across shifts, sites or suppliers?
Price pressure makes weak proof tempting
The market pressure is real. CBS reported that staffing-branch turnover in the first quarter of 2026 was 3.8 percent higher than one year earlier, fully due to higher prices. Staffing-agency prices rose 8.5 percent year on year.
What the signal changes
When labour becomes expensive and margins are thin, a cheap supplier can feel like relief. Sometimes a lower price comes from efficiency, planning or scale. Sometimes it calls for a sharper look. If the rate only works because hours disappear, deductions grow, tax is weak or workers depend on tied housing and transport, the buyer imports risk with every shift.
The worker is not an abstraction here. CBS reported that in 2024 the Netherlands had more than 2.3 thousand staffing agencies and 407 thousand agency jobs. Among agency-worker jobs, 52.4 percent were held by workers born abroad who had lived in the Netherlands for less than eight years. The largest origin groups included Poland, Romania, Ukraine and Bulgaria.
That is why a changed bank-account number should not sit in the payroll file as a harmless edit. In an agency-heavy chain, it is master data with human consequences.
The buyer’s job changes in 2027
The Wet toelating terbeschikkingstelling van arbeidskrachten, the Wtta, enters into force on 1 January 2027. Labour suppliers that want to continue lending workers must report to the Nederlandse Autoriteit Uitleenmarkt before that date. Enforcement by the Arbeidsinspectie starts on 1 January 2028. Fines can apply to suppliers operating without admission and to companies using them.
That shifts agency labour from purchasing convenience to supplier governance. A contract clause will not carry the file if nobody checks the supplier’s admission status, wage-payment route, onboarding proof and complaint handling.
The same direction is visible in the government’s May 2026 consultation on a proposed duty of care around BRP registration for migrant workers. The proposed duty includes information and verification duties for labour suppliers and applies to workers earning less than 150 percent of the statutory minimum wage.
Workers intending to stay in the Netherlands for longer than four months must register as residents in the municipality where they will live within five days after arrival. Rijksoverheid said that about 70 percent of EU migrant workers incorrectly registered in the BRP in 2023 worked through labour suppliers, based on CBS figures.
What founders should check
Address registration, housing, wages and worker contact are not separate boxes in a small business. They meet when something goes wrong and nobody knows where the person lives, which account received the wage or how the worker can speak safely.
Back at the manager’s desk
Return to the manager signing the agency hours. A sensible review starts with the labour suppliers already in use, not with a grand policy document. Who owns each supplier relationship inside the company? Which workers are on which site? Is housing or transport linked to the supplier? Is there a Wtta plan?
The practical file can be small at first. Can the business compare roster hours, supplier invoices, wage slips, deductions and payment evidence for a limited sample, within proper privacy boundaries? Does anyone speak to workers outside the supplier’s presence? Are bank-account changes logged and reviewed?
The fiscal side belongs on the same table. The Belastingdienst Handboek Loonheffingen 2026 requires payroll administration and wage states for employers, with basic records including payroll administration and the general ledger kept for seven years. For hired-in personnel, the employment relationship remains with the supplier, but the user may be jointly and severally liable for payroll taxes if the supplier fails to pay them.
A g-rekening can reduce certain liability risks, subject to conditions. It does not solve wage-route control, worker dependency or housing pressure.
The wage floor also forces discipline. From 1 July 2026, the statutory gross minimum hourly wage for workers aged 21 and older is €14.99. Since 2024, the Dutch statutory floor works through hours, not fixed monthly, weekly or daily amounts. Hours, age, leave, sickness and deductions need to make sense together.
A 2025 Rechtbank Gelderland decision, ECLI:NL:RBGEL:2025:4497, shows why the buyer’s records matter when agency wages fail. It concerned Hungarian migrant workers, an unproven employment contract with a staffing agency, established work for the user of labour and joint liability for wage payment under article 7:616a BW. It was a civil wage-liability signal, not the June 2026 criminal case. Still, the governance lesson is close: the company using the labour needs a record of what it checked and how it responded.
The worker’s wage is not outside the building because the employment contract sits elsewhere. If the person follows the company’s rhythm, fills the roster and carries production risk, the pay route belongs in management’s line of sight. Not with panic. With proof, ownership and a quiet refusal to let the invoice be the end of the story.
Sources
- CBS source
- Beslag op vermogen aandeelhouder uitzendbureau vleessector | Nederlandse Arbeidsinspectie
- Nederlandse Arbeidsinspectie – Earning models around labour exploitation and serious disadvantage
- Nederlandse Arbeidsinspectie – Meat processing, agency labour and cross-border housing
- Rijksoverheid – Wtta admission system for staffing agencies and other labour suppliers
- Rijksoverheid – Proposed BRP registration duty for labour suppliers
- CBS – Counting labour migrants and the registration problem
- CBS – Staffing-sector turnover and price pressure
Referenced in the article
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Column | Editorial
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