Employees in the Netherlands would gain greater legal support for working from home under legislation expected to become law.
The "Work Where You Want" proposal, which the Dutch House of Representatives approved in July, would oblige employers with 10 or more employees to accept workplace requests when certain conditions are met and would make it more difficult to refuse such requests, according to legal experts.
The employer, after weighing the circumstances, would need to judge that its interests, based on a standard of reasonableness and fairness, take second place to the employee's request, said Wouter Engelsman and Merel Keijzer, attorneys at CLINT | Littler in Amsterdam, in a joint e-mail.
The desired workplace must be within the European Union (EU) and must be either the employee's home address or another appropriate workplace where work for the employer usually takes place, they said. If the proposed workplace doesn't meet these requirements, "the employer will still have the 'duty to consider' and, in case of refusal, discuss this with the employee," they added.
The Dutch Senate appears likely to adopt the measure, according to the CLINT | Littler lawyers and Johanne Boelhouwer, an attorney with Dentons in Amsterdam. A Senate committee is scheduled to hold a preliminary investigation on Sept. 27.
Weighing Employer, Employee Interests
In principle, an employee's request to work from home should be granted "unless the employer has an interest that outweighs the...
News cricket Virat Kohli Breaks Silence On Claims He Was Paid Rs 5 Crore To Visit Premanand Maharaj's Ashram: 'False, Baseless' Virat Kohli, via his spokesperson, has strongly rejected claims made ...