The flex-worker bill asks small employers to decide earlier what work is truly temporary.
A Monday morning in a small firm starts with sick calls, not legal theory. One student is in exams. A customer still expects the order. That is the setting in which temporary contracts, on-call hours, agency help, and zzp fixes became normal.
The signal has to become readable
That habit is now under pressure. On 12 May 2026, Rijksoverheid reported that the Tweede Kamer adopted the Wet meer zekerheid flexwerkers. If the Eerste Kamer also agrees, the law can enter into force on 1 January 2028.
The point is not only legal. It changes how early a small employer must choose between flexibility and permanence.
When temporary work becomes a planning choice
The chain rule limits successive temporary contracts. The proposal removes the current CAO room to stretch the statutory duration from 36 months to 48 months. It also removes the possibility to raise the number of temporary contracts from 3 to 6 by CAO.
That matters because many employers have used CAO space as extra time. Official bill material counted 41 CAOs using deviation for successive employment. It also counted 17 CAOs using deviation from the number or duration of the chain rule.
The same material described revolving-door situations in which workers could stay temporary at the same organisation for up to 8.5 years through alternating agency and direct temporary arrangements. The Tweede Kamer also tightened the fallow period. After 3 temporary contracts, no new temporary contract may be concluded for 3 years.
For the employer at the roster table, the third contract is no longer a routine HR moment. It is a capacity decision.
Capacity has a price either way
CBS reports 2.7 million employees with a flexible employment relationship in Q1 2026, seasonally adjusted. It also reports 5.6 million employees with a permanent employment relationship. Flexible work is not a side lane in the Dutch labour market.
The market is still tight enough to make replacement costly. CBS counted 378 thousand open vacancies at the end of Q1 2026, equal to 91 vacancies per 100 unemployed people. UWV said the labour market cooled further, but 87 of 93 occupational groups were still tight or very tight.
What the signal changes
A small employer pays for flexibility in more than one way. A permanent contract raises fixed wage exposure. A temporary route raises turnover, recruitment time, training loss, and payroll risk. Agency work can look flexible on the invoice, but it still brings higher rates, supplier checks, and continuity costs.
Wages add pressure. CBS reported that CAO hourly wages including special payments were 4.5 percent higher in Q1 2026 than a year earlier. Contractual labour costs rose by 4.4 percent. Certainty is still possible. Lazy uncertainty is becoming expensive.
The roster has to tell the truth
The bill also changes on-call work. Rijksoverheid says on-call contracts will be replaced by contracts with a minimum number of hours that are normally paid and rostered. The proposed bandwidth contract uses a minimum and maximum number of hours.
The maximum may be at most 130 percent of the minimum. A 10-hour minimum can therefore have a 13-hour maximum. If someone structurally works more hours, the employer must offer a higher-hours contract under the proposed rule. A worker may refuse calls above the maximum.
That looks simple. It is not. The roster has to become more honest. The informal favour economy around availability weakens when minimum hours, maximum hours, actual shifts, and structural extra work all have to fit together.
Agency work is tightening too. Rijksoverheid says agency workers must receive at least equivalent employment conditions compared with workers directly employed in similar work. The most uncertain agency phases are shortened from 18 months to 1 year.
Separate from that, the Wtta admission regime for labour suppliers enters into force on 1 January 2027. Enforcement by the Nederlandse Arbeidsinspectie starts on 1 January 2028. Companies using non-admitted labour suppliers can also face fines.
The clean escape often looks less clean once the work itself behaves like employment. The Belastingdienst fully resumed checks on schijnzelfstandigheid from 1 January 2025. On 16 June 2026, Gerechtshof Amsterdam held in ECLI:NL:GHAMS:2026:1612 that the Temper platform relationship involved an agency employment agreement between Temper and the workers.
What a small employer can see now
The first useful exercise is not a legal memo. It is a contract calendar. For each temporary worker, the employer can see the start date, contract number, expected end date, role, reason for temporary status, and next decision date.
What founders should check
Then comes the roster. Do the minimum hours match the real week? Are extra shifts occasional, or are they the way the business survives? Is the same work continuing through a new agency, a new temporary contract, or a zzp invoice?
If the answer is yes, the company is not buying flexibility. It is postponing a staffing decision.
The payroll file matters as well. A Belastingdienst execution test said the correct AWf premium may depend on the written employment contract, addenda, personnel rules or handbook, and the applicable CAO, sometimes at employment-contract level. In plain language, contract wording, payroll treatment, CAO coverage, and actual hours need to tell the same story.
Back to that Monday morning. The employer still has sick calls. CBS reported sickness absence of 5.8 percent among employees in Q1 2026, above the long-term average since 1996. In healthcare and welfare, absence was 8.2 percent.
The need for flexibility is real. It is just more expensive when the company keeps resetting the same work.
The better question is not fixed or flexible. It is whether the work is priced, planned, and documented as it really exists. If a reliable worker has carried the same customer route, care shift, workshop bench, or service desk for years, certainty may be cheaper than losing the person and pretending the role was temporary.
The flex-worker bill still depends on the Eerste Kamer. That gives employers time, not permission to wait. By 2028, many of today’s renewal choices will already have shaped the staff base.
That is not a dramatic labour-law story. It is a morning roster story. The law is catching up with a question good employers already know: if the business needs the same work every week, how long can it honestly call that work temporary?
Sources
- CBS labour market data
- Bij cao afwijken van ketenbepaling beperkt door Wet meer zekerheid flexwerkers · Salaris Vanmorgen
- Rijksoverheid – Flex-worker bill adopted by Tweede Kamer
- Rijksoverheid – CAO deviation from the chain rule
- Rijksoverheid – Admission regime for labour suppliers, Wtta
- CBS – Vacancies and labour-market tension
- UWV – UWV view of persistent tightness
- UWV – Vacancy outlook and job growth through 2028
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