Bringing more people to the Netherlands to do low-skilled work in slaughterhouses and distribution centres will only increase the “miserable working and living conditions” many people find themselves in, according to chief labour inspector Rits de Boer.

De Boer told the Volkskrant in an interview on Tuesday that sharing a bed in shifts, the tents in the bushes between Scheveningen and The Hague, and the construction sites where people sleep on mattresses on the ground, all indicate that the Netherlands cannot cope with the influx of low skilled workers. 

More than that, “another thousand minibuses with leaking fuel pumps are not helping reach our environmental targets,” he said. Nor are “another 100,000 people a year that we can’t build homes for because of the nitrogen restrictions”.  

De Boer has spoken out about the exploitation of mainly eastern Europeans before and has called for a rethink of the country’s economic strategy. “It is important that when we are looking at new industry, that we look at the downside as well as the economic benefits,” he told the Volkskrant.

“Labour migration may lead to growth in GDP on paper, but the costs such as the pressure on the housing market, education, energy provision, healthcare, are not priced in,” he said. “But local authorities should take these negative effects into account when they decide about permits.”

Labour migrants, he said, are treated as “bulk goods”. “Employers need them,” he said, “but forget they are human beings.”

He said inspectors are confronted with tax and salary constructions every day in which employers seek to make more money from their workers. “We’ve looked into 24 and found that foreign workers are 20% to 30% cheaper than their Dutch equivalent,” he said. “And if you work with illegal immigrants, the savings can mount up to 60%.”

“I understand that ways to keep down the cost of labour are attractive if you want to keep your company afloat in an international, competitive market, but if you can only keep your head above water by paying your workers less than the legal minimum, you should not be in the Netherlands.”

Report

A major report commissioned by the government and published in 2020 made 50 recommendations for improving the situation of people coming to the Netherlands from abroad to work in greenhouses or in the meat industry.

However, so far little has been done by the government to implement the measures although the social affairs ministry plans to introduce some form of certification scheme in 2025.

Some 500,000 people from other EU countries work in Netherlands, mainly in farming, distribution centres, factories and the meat industry.

Highly skilled migrants

Earlier this year, the labour inspectorate also published a report saying the kennismigrant, or highly-skilled migrant, scheme, which allows thousands of people from outside the EU to work in the Netherlands, is open to fraud, is outdated and there is no adequate supervision.

Inspectors have come across “hairdressers, cable layers, cleaners, payroll workers, hospitality sector workers and nail salon workers” who have been brought to the Netherlands using the scheme. “There are also knowledge workers who turn out not to work at all, and others who work but receive little or no pay,” De Boer said in March.

Around 90,000 people are thought to be in the Netherlands via the highly-skilled migrant scheme.