Dutch gov't to take harsher action against employers who pay migrant workers too little

The Dutch government is working on a new law to take harsher actions against employers who pay their workers too little. The law will allow underpaid employees to claim the money they are entitled to by putting the burden of proving a fair wage on the employer. This will particularly protect migrant workers, who often face exploitation, AD reports.

The Labour Inspectorate suspects that many thousands of migrant workers receive less than the statutory minimum wage. Claiming that money from their employer is currently difficult, because malicious employers fail to keep proper track of how many hours someone has worked. As a result, it is impossible to prove whether someone was underpaid.

Under the new law, it will be up to employers to prove that they paid their workers sufficient wages. If the company cannot do so, it must pay the back pay retroactively. In the most extreme case, this amount can rise to around €14,000 - six months of work, 36 hours per week, at the minimum wage of around €15 per hour.

Companies are already required to maintain proper records or risk a fine. But according to the Labor Inspectorate, malicious employers sometimes accept the fine as it is lower than the back-pay owed, and workers currently have no legal options to demand their outstanding wages. Losing records or failing to keep them properly is a method to pay migrant workers less than they are entitled to.

The law is one of the recommendations made by the Roemer Committee six years ago after it uncovered the large-scale exploitation of migrant workers in the Netherlands. Many employers in the Netherlands make migrant workers work too many hours for too little pay while housing them in deplorable circumstances. This also means that the worker is dependent on the employer for housing - if they lose their job, they’re also homeless. The previous Cabinet already took steps to give migrant workers more tenancy protection, but those rules have not taken effect yet.