The (Association of Dutch Municipalities, VNG) made this known this Thursday. The number is based on "current information from municipalities." The trustees expect responses from other municipalities.
The VNG says that, “the continuity of the relationship between therapist and client remains” and that home carers should maintain their employment.
Administrators Daniels and Van der Hel were satisfied with this preliminary result. “It's nice that this is achieved through a constructive attitude of many parties.”
Bankruptcy
The bankruptcy that TSN ThuisZorg faced was caused by the declining contribution for care. TSN had to spend around 27 euros per hour on 'help with housekeeping,' while municipalities paid about 21 euros for a similar task. In order to catch up with their declining profit, the largest home care organisation in the Netherlands was forced to reduced the hourly wages of these employees by 20 to 30 percent.
The judge forbade this, so TSN was in acute financial distress. In the autumn of 2015, they asked for a suspension of payments.
Buurtzorg offered to take over 7,500 employees of the ailing TSN ThuisZorg, about three quarters of the old company. That number was later revised to between 1,500 and 4,000. Buurtzorg had to take over the job on the condition that municipalities would pay their employees enough; more than 21 euros per hour.
Refusal
Precisely because of this condition, a number of municipalities have rejected the bid made by Buurtzorg, including major cities like Apeldoorn and Utrecht. Apeldoorn stated they would lose an additional 40 thousand euros in this endevour.
“If we give Buurtzorg extra money, we should also compensate other provider,s and we are talking about half a million this year alone. For that money, there wouldn't be a single house extra cleaned,” says the municipality.
In addition to Utrecht and Apeldoorn, Woudenberg, Nijmegen, Winterswijk, Doetinchem and Losser declared to take up the offer of Buurtzorg. 99 of the 137 municipalities have already made the decision. Some municipalities have also indicated to deal with other competitors at large.