The country’s biggest trade union federation, the FNV, is calling for a moratorium on further reforms in the social security sector.

In particular, the development of a new system to cover invalidity benefits and sick pay for freelancers should not go ahead, the union says.

Such a system is ‘unaffordable, undesirable and impossible to achieve’, FNV chairman Ton Heerts said in an interview in Tuesday’s Financieele Dagblad. ‘Employers and political parties calling for change are hacking at the very roots of our social security system,’ he said.

Employers’ organisation AWVN and a number of political parties have called for change to cope with the growing number of self-employed people in the Dutch workforce. Many of them don’t take out insurance to cover themselves in case of sickness or long-term ill health.

Heerts says the move to create a system for both employees and the self-employed might sound ‘caring’. However it has been dreamed up by ‘right-wingers and employers who don’t want to pay any premiums and want to put all the risks on workers’ shoulders,’ he told the paper.

Instead, employers and government should focus on ensuring companies don’t ditch their permanent staff and replace them by people on flexible or freelance contracts, Heerts said.