Employment Event: A year of change
All sorts of circumstances may make it necessary to amend the terms of employment of an employee or group of employees. How do you deal with this as an employer? To what extent are employees required to cooperate? What is the works council's role when there are changes? And how will the Future of Pensions Act (Wet toekomst pensioenen) affect all this?
The theme of the Houthoff Employment Event was 'A year of change'. We covered the following subjects at the event:
Amending terms of employment
If there is no unilateral changes clause and an employee does not accept a proposal to amend the terms of employment, employers still have a number of options to introduce changes. The Dutch Supreme Court recently shed more light on rules of thumb it had provided in the past, clarifying in what situations employees will be required to cooperate. Jet Stolk and Myrthe Prinsze discussed this case law and shared some dos and don'ts when amending terms of employment.
The works council's role in amendments
The works council plays a key role when changes to certain types of terms of employment are proposed. Greater support from within the organisation can be gained by properly involving the works council in the amendment proposal, consulting them and going through every step of the consent process. Edward de Bock discussed how employers can engage effectively with the works council when changing collective terms of employment.
The Future of Pensions Act
The Future of Pensions Act will have major implications for employers and employees. Roland de Greef and Anouk Boutens talked you through the main changes and issues that are relevant to employers. They focused primarily on employers that have an insured pension scheme. Aspects exploreded included the timing and implementation of the new pension system, types of pension scheme and exceptions, employees' right of consent, the position of employee representatives and employers' duty of care.
Naomi Dempsey also discussed a number of high-profile cases.
