Flexible working to become a legal right

Telecommuting and flexible working is to become a legal right in the Netherlands. The law must ensure that employees can easier combine work and family responsibilities.

According to NU.nl, this proposal was made by the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) as well as the GreenLeft. The Senate (Eerste Kamer) reached an agreement on this with a large majority on Tuesday 14 April 2015, which the House of Representatives (Tweede Kamer) had already done last October.

NU.nl claims that the law must facilitate a balance in carrying out work and family responsibilities, however the right to telecommuting or flexible working is not absolute. The law gives employees the entitlement to submit a request, and employers are obliged to deal with it seriously. Thus, “simple refusals such as “this is not our policy” are not sufficient”, said the advocators of the law. Only “weighty business reasons” should be accepted.

The overall intention is to facilitate flexible working hours, such as in giving employees the liberty to work a day from home or adjust their working hours to school hours. This seems particularly beneficial for single parents, as they would not have to reduce their working hours.