When pension age moves, payroll tools, rosters, and older workers feel the gap first.
On Monday morning, a 66-year-old fitter opens the payroll overview and finds his senior hours missing. His AOW date is still ahead. The planner needs him on the job. Payroll points to the tool. The owner checks the CAO, the contract, and the roster, then sees the real problem: the rule has not kept pace with the pension clock.
Proof now opens the door
A late-June payroll note captured a familiar Dutch tension. Some senior-leave settings still behave as if age 65 were the reference point. Rijksoverheid states that the AOW age is 67 in 2025, 2026, and 2027. From 2028 through 2031, it rises to 67 years and 3 months. Article 7a of the Algemene Ouderdomswet links the future AOW age to CBS life expectancy and fixes it five years in advance. The individual start date still depends on date of birth.
That shift does not create senior days by itself. Above-statutory leave belongs in the CAO, the employment contract, or company policy. When a rule is meant to run until AOW age, payroll needs the current AOW age, not an older assumption.
The payroll tool is not the rule
This is a governance problem before it is a benefits problem. A calculator can look precise and still be out of date. A manager can give a firm answer and still miss the legal basis. A payroll provider can execute the setting it has, while the company keeps the employment relationship and the risk.
For a small employer, the practical effect is plain. If senior hours continue until the later AOW date, the roster loses capacity and the wage bill carries more paid absence. If they stop too early, a worker can lose recovery time while the business still depends on his hands, judgment, and memory.
Wages, hours and work identity
Clean HR practice therefore cannot stop at age 65. It has to ask two questions: what does the CAO actually say, and what is this worker's AOW date? Anything less invites an expensive misunderstanding at the exact point where a line manager wants a simple answer.
Age needs a reason
Dutch law treats age-based differences in employment conditions with care. The Wet gelijke behandeling op grond van leeftijd bij de arbeid, the WGBL, allows them only when objective justification exists. The aim must be legitimate, and the measure must fit that aim. Habit is not enough.
Two court signals matter here. In ECLI:NL:GHARN:2010:BO6310, the Court of Appeal Arnhem treated a stand-alone senior-leave scheme as conflicting with the WGBL. The weak point was the lack of a strong justification and a wider policy frame. In ECLI:NL:GHSHE:2018:1406, the Court of Appeal 's-Hertogenbosch accepted the age-related measures because they sat inside a coherent policy for older workers.
That difference is the practical lesson. A loose perk is harder to defend than a well-built package. Senior days, reduced hours, leave saving, training, workload changes, mentoring, and heavy-work relief make more sense when they belong together. They also help an owner explain the rule without sounding as if payroll invented it on its own.
The roster carries the cost
The labour market still has pressure in it. CBS counted 378,000 open vacancies at the end of Q1 2026. It also counted 91 vacancies per 100 unemployed people. Among 55 to 65-year-olds, net labour participation stood at 75.5 percent in Q1 2026. For employers with older staff, that age mix matters.
Older employees are often not interchangeable hours. They know which customer changes the order after approval. They remember the machine that behaves badly after a cold weekend. They warn a younger colleague before a mistake turns into a claim. When trust breaks over senior leave, the damage can travel further than the missing hours.
The cost side stays real. From 1 July 2026, the statutory minimum hourly wage for workers aged 21 and older is €14.99. The older-worker LKV was abolished from 1 January 2026 for employments that started on or after 1 January 2024, with transitional treatment for earlier starts.
The small employer risk
So the real calculation is not only the number of senior hours. It is the replacement shift, the overtime premium, the agency worker, the delayed delivery, the leave balance, and the client call when planning slips. A small leave rule can become a margin rule very quickly.
Heavy work is a separate route
The policy background has also shifted. The 2024 Gezond naar het pensioen agreement pushed the discussion toward healthy work until pension, targeted RVU use for heavy work, and sustainable employability. Since 1 April 2026, CAO parties can submit substantiated heavy-work delineations to TNO’s Expertisecentrum Zwaar Werk.
RVU is not senior leave. It can let a worker stop up to three years before AOW without the employer paying the RVU pseudo-levy up to the threshold. For 2026, that threshold is €2,357 gross per month. Rijksoverheid also describes a possible €300 gross monthly top-up for low incomes, without extra RVU tax for employers.
Those are tax and cash-flow choices, not a fix for a wrong senior-leave rule. Back in the workshop, the owner does not need a lecture. He needs one clear line between the CAO text, the payroll setting, the worker's AOW date, and the company's policy for heavy work.
The calm review starts with four questions. Does senior leave use a fixed age or the individual AOW date? What does the CAO actually say? Can the company explain the age-based measure beyond habit? What will the choice do to wages, cover, planning, and trust?
Older workers do not ask for perfection from an employer. They do notice when the company promise ends because a tool still remembers an older pension age. When the AOW clock moves, payroll has to move with it. Otherwise the roster carries a conflict that should already have been settled in the rules.
Sources
- Discrepantie gestegen AOW-leeftijd en berekening seniorendagen in cao's: hoe zit dat? · Salaris Vanmorgen
- Rijksoverheid (SZW) – AOW age schedule 2025–2031
- Wettenbank – Legal basis for setting AOW age (AOW article 7a)
- Wettenbank – Age‑discrimination standard for senior arrangements (WGBL)
- Rechtspraak – Case law: senior leave invalid when isolated
- Rechtspraak – Case law: objective justification accepted when embedded in broader policy
- Rijksoverheid (SZW) – Policy frame: ‘Gezond naar het pensioen’ agreement
- Rijksoverheid (SZW) – Funding and projects for heavy work; knowledge route
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