It is news nobody wants to hear: you are being made redundant. But if you are a foreign worker in the Netherlands, losing your job could have far-reaching consequences, not just for your income but also for your residency status.
Robert Berendsen, an employment and rental lawyer who regularly advises international employees, highly skilled migrants and executives in the Netherlands and speaks four languages, is dealing with ever more requests for advice. Several large employers like banks and global businesses are entering redundancy rounds – partly linked to the adoption of AI – and people whose jobs are at risk may have limited time to act.
“One day you come into the office and you get the bad news that your position has become redundant: this is the terminology that your manager or HR will use,” he said. “It might be an international company that has a Dutch presence and decided to leave. It might be that they’re going to let you go – but your job is not you. It’s your position.”
Impact
Berendsen said that while redundancy is never welcome, it has even more impact on internationals whose tax status or residency is related to providing scarce skills. If you are an immigrant with the 30% ruling – where a proportion of your salary is paid free of tax – or on a highly skilled migrant visa, the clock starts ticking.
“You need to find a qualifying job within three months, but the traps are in the timing,” he said. “For the 30% ruling, that three-month clock can start the moment you are placed on gardening leave. For your visa, however, it generally starts when the contract formally ends. Miscalculating these overlapping timelines is where many international workers get caught out.
“For senior executives and high earners, the stakes are often higher than just a standard severance package. The focus quickly shifts to unvested stock options, deferred compensation, bonuses, and navigating restrictive non-compete clauses.”
Transfer
Assuming you find a qualifying job within this time, you can transfer the benefits of the 30% ruling, which runs for a total of five years. If you are on the highly-skilled visa, however, you risk losing your residency status if you do not find other qualifying work.
“If you negotiate in these circumstances, there are several reasons why your interests might be better served to stay on the payroll longer, rather than getting a larger severance payment,” said Berendsen. “Another reason is that finding a job while employed is generally easier than finding a job while unemployed.”
There are other questions that you need to ask. The first is whether other similar positions are also being made redundant and, if so, how long others have worked at the company. “We have strict statutory selection rules based on age groups and length of service,” said Berendsen. “You have to find out if people staying behind have been with the company less than you have and whether they’re in the same age group, because in that case, your employer may be in breach of the law.”
Challenge
Under Dutch employment law, companies also have an obligation to look for suitable work for you within their own group of businesses. “The employer must also investigate whether suitable alternative positions are available within the company or elsewhere within the group’s worldwide operations,” he said.
“It needs to do that in consultation with the employee, to sit down and ask about your skills, your interests, and discuss what kind of positions might become available for the coming four or six months that could be suitable for you worldwide.”
Legal precedent means that firms may not be able to force a sister company in, say, Africa, to offer you a job – but they do need to ask. An employee does not have to accept a job at the other end of the world either, but it should be offered if it fits their skillset and could avoid a redundancy.
Social plan
If you are not alone in the redundancy round, you need to find out whether there is a collective agreement known as a social plan. In this case, it has been discussed with the works council and any unions and has to apply to everyone equally.
To make someone redundant, a Dutch company must formally ask for permission through the labour authorities but since this is a lengthy and expensive process – with the possibility for multiple appeals – they tend to settle.
“They will try to do so in a way which is slightly more appealing to the employee than the best-case scenario in the labour authorities’ proceedings,” said Berendsen.
“They might offer you three months’ extra wages and maybe severance pay higher than the statutory one-third of a month of salary for each whole year worked. Many employees assume that the first offer is non-negotiable, but that is often not the case.”
Take legal advice, but also remember that even after you have signed a settlement agreement, you have two weeks to think it over. You can rescind the deal in this time without a reason, and this can give you vital time to work on finding other options.
Looking up
Meanwhile, remember that we are not in a crisis situation like the period of mass unemployment in the 1980s. “When thousands of people are laid off, it’s going to be difficult to find a similar good job easily,” said Berendsen. “But we’ve had a shortage of labour for many years in this country. And your offer usually contains compensation for your legal fees.”
With the stress of your tax position and potentially your residency status hanging, it might be easy to despair, but Mr Berendsen has seen multiple stories with a happy ending.
“I’ve been doing this for 26 years, and I get a lot of people that feel very much affected emotionally,” said Berendsen. “It’s never nice, but it could also be an opportunity. Most of my clients actually find very fulfilling alternative jobs.”
Mr Berendsen Advocaten offers a fixed-fee legal review of redundancy and settlement packages, starting at €695 including VAT.
