The 2028 proposal does not end flexibility. It makes availability visible in contracts, rosters and cash flow.
Dutch flex work is becoming a file question before it becomes a courtroom question. The proposed rules do not remove the need for flexible labour. They ask a sharper question: how much capacity does the business really need, and can the contract, roster and payroll file prove it?
For a small employer, that is practical. It affects the Friday roster, the quiet Tuesday shift, the student who works only during peaks, and the adult on-call worker who is needed almost every weekend. Flexibility stays possible, but hidden availability becomes harder to carry quietly.
Dutch flex work starts with capacity
The Dutch flex-work bill was adopted by the Tweede Kamer on 12 May 2026. If the Eerste Kamer also agrees, the government says the new regime can enter into force on 1 January 2028. That sounds far away. In practice, contracts signed in 2026 and 2027 can still shape the workforce pattern when the new rules start to bite.
CBS counted 2.7 million employees with a flexible employment relationship in Q1 2026. That was 17,000 more than in the previous quarter. Add self-employed workers without personnel, and the flexible labour group was about 3.9 million people, around 4 in 10 workers.
Eurostat shows why the Dutch case is unusually exposed. In 2024, temporary employment was 11.0 percent across the EU. The Netherlands stood at 22.2 percent for the working-age population and 48.8 percent among employees aged 15 to 29. Dutch employers have used flexible work as a normal operating tool.
Availability becomes a cost
The proposal replaces zero-hour contracts with a bandwidth contract. That means a minimum and maximum number of hours, with the maximum no more than 130 percent of the minimum. A 10-hour minimum would therefore allow a 13-hour maximum. Calls above the agreed maximum may be refused.
That sounds technical, but the business meaning is simple. Availability becomes a paid capacity decision. If a shop, cafe, installer or care provider needs someone almost every Friday and Saturday, the question is no longer whether that person can be called. The question is how much capacity the business is really buying.
Take a small cafe with two fixed employees, three students and one adult on-call worker. Thursday is quiet, Saturday is full, and rain changes footfall in an hour. The owner may currently survive by moving hours at short notice. Under the new logic, the owner has to know which hours are genuine demand and which hours are only old habit.
The roster has to match the file
The temporary-contract chain moves in the same direction. Under the Tweede Kamer amendment, after three temporary contracts a new temporary contract would not be allowed for three years. That is a clear message. When the same role returns again and again, the role itself becomes the control question.
This reform is not arriving in a relaxed cost environment. CBS reported collectively negotiated hourly wages including special remuneration up 4.5 percent year on year in Q1 2026. CPI inflation was 2.8 percent in April. Consumer confidence fell to -46 in May, with willingness to buy at -28.
So the small firm is squeezed in a practical way. Labour becomes less elastic, while customers may not accept every price increase. That does not make the reform wrong. It does mean the owner-manager has to stop treating the roster as an afterthought.
Payroll is part of the same file. Belastingdienst guidance for 2026 sets the low AWf premium at 2.74 percent and the high premium at 7.74 percent. The low premium applies only where the employment contract is indefinite, written and not an on-call contract, subject to exceptions. Contract text, actual hours and payroll coding need to point in the same direction.
Agency work becomes evidence too
Agency work is also becoming less distant from the user company. The proposal says agency workers would receive at least equivalent employment conditions compared with workers directly employed in equal or equivalent roles. The early agency phases with the least certainty would be shortened from one and a half years to one year.
For a small company using agency workers, this is not only the agency’s problem. The user company already has to make its employment conditions known before the assignment starts. In practice, role comparison, pay components, allowances, working time, rest time, overtime, holidays and schedules become part of the evidence file.
The wider Dutch labour-supply chain is also tightening. The Wet toelating terbeschikkingstelling van arbeidskrachten enters into force on 1 January 2027, with Labour Inspectorate enforcement from 1 January 2028. Supplier choice is becoming a governance decision.
What small employers should map
The flex-work bill is separate from tax enforcement on false self-employment. Still, the direction is similar. Belastingdienst describes false self-employment as a situation where someone is presented as self-employed while the relationship has the characteristics of employment. Across contract forms, the Dutch state is moving from labels toward substance.
That is the point I would keep in front of the founder. This is not only a legal reform. It is a test of whether the business model knows its own labour reality. Who controls the work? How recurring is the role? Which hours are paid? Which hours are merely expected?
There is time to prepare without panic. The useful exercise is a worker map for the last 12 months: employees, on-call workers, temporary contracts, agency workers and self-employed contractors. Then compare contract hours with actual hours, payroll treatment with contract form, and recurring work with the story told in the file.
Dutch flex work will not disappear. But flexibility that depends on weak documentation, unpaid readiness or repeated temporary work for structural roles is becoming harder to carry quietly. The small business that understands this early does not lose agility. It replaces hidden risk with clearer decisions.
