Netherlands - Helpling app cleaners are agency workers - September 30, 2021

The Amsterdam appeals court decided that house cleaners hired via the app Helpling are temporary agency workers and must be given paid sick leave and compensation if they lose their jobs. The court stopped short of including them in the collective agreement for cleaners which would have treated them as permanent workers. Trade union FNV brought the case together with a cleaner in 2019, arguing that the app is an employer and must pay its cleaners accordingly. The app, launched in 2012, allows households looking for domestic help to search its database for cleaners.

Read on: in English.

For more information, please contact Paul de Beer or Oana Ciuca, De Burcht (Scientific Bureau for the Dutch Trade Union Movement) p.t.debeer@uva.nl or the Head of communications at the ETUI, Mehmet Koksal mkoksal@etui.org. For previous full issues of the Collective bargaining newsletter please visit https://www.etui.org/Newsletters/Collective-bargaining-newsletter or consult the archive with all articles in our database at www.cbnarchive.eu.
You may find further information on the ETUI at www.etui.org.