Apparently there's a new Dutch employment law coming in 1st July 2015 whereby you have to pay yourself a "transition allowance" of 3% per year when you quit your contract (if you've been on a project for more than 2 years). Transition allowance seems to be what we would call redundancy pay in the UK. Anyway, I work through a management company and they told me the other week they would be withholding 3% of my salary going forwards plus, it's backdated to the start of the project (January 2011 for me) so they also need to withhold 3% of my earnings to date to cover that period. Supposedly I would get it back as transition allowance when I finish the project (if the management company is still around).
Worse still, I have enquired about changing management company (not related to this but, because their fees are too high and I have an extension due end of March, so now's a good time to change) and at least two management companies have refused to take on my business because of the risk of having to pay transition allowance back to 2011. They will only take me on with a new client so it counts as a new employment. So it looks like I am stuck with the management company until the end of this project.
Has anyone else encountered this?
