The Bottom Line
- Clarity on Post-Placement Pay: A Dutch court has confirmed that a staffing agency’s obligation to match a hirer’s pay and benefits (the “hirer’s reward principle”) ends when the worker’s placement ends. Post-placement, the terms of the agency’s own collective labor agreement (CAO) take precedence.
- Contract is King: The primary employment contract between the agency and the seconded employee governs obligations like sick pay and benefits when the employee is not actively placed. This limits an agency’s exposure to potentially more generous terms in the hirer’s CAO.
- “Factual Salary” Excludes Extras: The court upheld the agency CAO’s narrow definition of “last-earned factual salary,” which explicitly excludes bonuses, end-of-year payments, and holiday allowances. This provides significant cost certainty for agencies with employees “on the bench” or on long-term sick leave.
The Details
This case involved a dispute between a teacher on a permanent secondment contract and her employer, a specialized education staffing agency. While placed at a school, her salary correctly mirrored the school’s own pay scale under the Collective Labor Agreement for Primary Education (cao PO). However, after her placement ended and she went on long-term sick leave, a conflict arose. The teacher argued that she was still entitled to all pay rises, bonuses, and benefits stipulated in the school’s cao PO. The agency contended that its obligations reverted to its own, less generous, agency-specific CAO (the NBBU CAO).
The Rotterdam District Court sided decisively with the staffing agency. The court’s reasoning was grounded in the contractual hierarchy. The foundational legal document was the secondment agreement between the teacher and the agency, which clearly stipulated that the agency’s (NBBU) CAO was the governing agreement. The requirement to match the school’s terms was a condition of the active placement. Once that specific assignment concluded, the core terms of the primary employment contract resumed their central role, dictating the ongoing obligations between the agency and its employee.
The court also clarified a critical point regarding the Dutch agency work law (the Waadi). The teacher invoked the Waadi’s equal treatment principle, but the court noted this principle applies specifically to workers who are actively “made available” to a third-party hirer. As the teacher’s placement had officially ended, she was no longer in this category. Consequently, the agency’s duty was to pay her “last-earned factual salary” as defined in its own CAO. This definition explicitly excluded the bonuses and end-of-year payments she was claiming, leading to the rejection of the bulk of her claim.
Source
Source: Rechtbank Rotterdam
