Woman who called in sick for 3 full-time jobs at once ordered to repay €73,000 in wages

A woman who worked three full-time jobs and a part-time position simultaneously, and then collected sick leave benefits from many of them, must repay over 73,285.20 euros in wrongly paid wages, the Subdistrict Court in Amsterdam ruled at the end of October. The woman argued that she was perfectly capable of performing all three jobs at once, and that her employers knew of each other, but the court disagreed, saying she did not act in good faith when she took positions that required a combined total of more than 120 hours of work per week.

The single mother of two started working as a data scientist for Henkel, the company behind Schwarzkopf shampoo and Pritt glue products, during the coronavirus lockdown in September 2021. In January 2022, she also took a full-time job at sticker manufacturer Avery Dennison and a full-time internship at ABN Amro. She also did some part-time work at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. She couldn’t keep this workload up for long.

Court records show the woman was earning over 5,000 euros per month at Henkel, not including holiday pay and additional benefits. She went on sick leave on Feb. 28, 2022, collecting 100 percent of her salary for the first year of leave, and 70 percent the year after. Two months after reporting sick at Henkel, she did the same at ABN Amro and Avery Dennison.

When the statutory period of sick leave ended at Henkel, she filed an application for disability benefits with government agency UWV, which led to the discovery. The woman was caught in 2024 when Henkel learned from the benefits agency UWV that the sick employee indeed had another job. Subsequent investigation revealed her third full-time job and the part-time work she performed for the university.

It emerged in court filings that she took the ABN Amro internship with a 40-hour per week contract running from January 10, 2022, to September 10 of the same year. Five days later, she started her contract with Avery Dennison, a 40-hour per week deal that ran through mid-August of 2022. She was contracted to earn 2,855 euros gross per month, plus 8 percent holiday pay and an 8 percent year-end bonus.

"In addition, [she] had an employment relationship with VU University Amsterdam for an unknown number of hours per week/month. In addition to her work at VU University Amsterdam, [she] therefore had three employment contracts of 40 hours per week. According to these contracts, she was therefore required to work 120 hours per week," the court wrote in its summary of the case.

Henkel terminated the woman’s contract and filed a lawsuit against her to recover part of the salary paid out during her illness. In a hearing at the Subdistrict Court, the woman argued that Henkel knew about her other jobs and that she was perfectly able to perform all three jobs simultaneously.

The court found these claims “completely implausible.” The court acknowledged that Henkel had not formally banned the woman from performing secondary activities and may have been aware of her work at the university.

But the woman “should have realized that she would be inadequate in fulfilling her duties with these three employers and that three full-time positions are impossible to combine as a single mother with two children," the court said. This is confirmed by the fact that she became so ill that she could not work any of these jobs.

"[She] should have understood that, in addition to her full-time employment contract at Henkel (40 hours per week), she could not enter into one or even two additional 40-hour contracts, let alone do so without consulting Henkel, which she did not do," the court wrote in its verdict. She "could have been expected to submit her wish to work full-time" at ABN Amro and Avery Dennison in a message to Henkel to ask for permission, and this could have been done independently and promptly. "The subdistrict court seriously doubts that she would have received such permission."

Her argument that the sick leave at Henkel was due to a conflict with a colleague was rejected, and also deemed "irrelevant" to the discussion over her multitude of employment relationships. "Completely separate from this, [she] can also be accused of lying to Henkel after Henkel asked [her] for clarification about a second employment contract in June 2024."

The court said she was not truthful in her response to the company about whether she had worked for the university or any other company once she reported sick, and whether she had received any additional income. "Only months later, and after Henkel had initiated a preliminary witness hearing, did [she] disclose this. This demonstrates that [the defendant] was fully aware that she had acted improperly," the court said.

A review of her 2022 income tax filing show she collected 24,801 euros from Avery Dennison that year, 2,829 euros for her ABN Amro internship, 720 euros from Vrije Universiteit, and 8,969 euros in sickness benefits. The following year, she earned 27,691 euros from her sick leave benefits alone, and an additional 8,995 euros for the same during the first four months of 2024.

The court ruled that Henkel can offset the salary and illness benefits that he woman received from her other two full-time jobs against the wages the company paid during her illness. This amounted to 73,285 euros, plus interest dating back to February of this year. She is also responsible for almost 3,300 euros in legal costs.