Labour law in the Netherlands

Abstract:

Labour law, social security law and social policy are areas of public policy which have dominated Dutch politics for the last half century. This has led the Dutch to a concentration on sustaining a Welfare State that has involved frantic efforts to reconcile a competitive economy with a high degree of social protection. Dutch lawyers are engaged in a never ending fine tuning of the laws of the Welfare State and the area of labour law from which quite remarkable compromises emerge such as the concept of ‘flexicurity’. This activity has almost created a new national identity for the Dutch as the engineers of change in seeking social cohesion, and has attracted keen interest from numerous foreign observers. This book provides an outline of the actual state of labour law and the laws governing the system of industrial relations in the Netherlands.

The work is organised in two parts which follow a comprehensive background introduction. Part one addresses the individual Employment Relationship and Labour Market Regulation with chapters concerning categories of workers, duties of the parties to employment contracts, remuneration, working time and health and safety. Part two looks at collective labour relations, featuring trade unions and employer associations, neo-corporatist system, collective bargaining, industrial disputes and employee participation in the enterprise.

The work will interest scholars, students, researchers and policy makers engaged in the fields of social sciences, welfare law, and employment relations.

Antoine T.J.M. Jacobs is Professor in Labour Law, Social Security Law and Social Policy at the University of Tilburg, the Netherlands.