Collaborations among employers on health care labor market cannot harm health care workers
Are employers allowed to collaborate as a way of dealing with the shortages on the health care labor market? Yes, they can, but their collaborations cannot harm the positions of health care workers. The Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) has compiled a list of what is and what is not allowed when employers in the health care sector launch collaborations on the health care labor market.
Opportunities for and limits to collaborations
The law offers plenty of room for initiatives where employers collaborate in order to deploy employees more flexibly, both salaried workers and independent contractors (self-employed). For example, an online platform can be created that helps employees find work at various organizations in their areas. That will help realize a more efficient utilization of workers in an area, and, at the same time, it offers employees more leeway and flexibility. That is why such initiatives are allowed. However, agreements that curtail the positions and opportunities of salaried workers and independent contractors are not allowed, for example if employers collectively decide the terms of employment outside of a collective labor agreement. As employee representatives do not have a seat at the table in those discussions, such agreements often result in worse conditions for health care workers. That may even result in those workers leaving the health care sector.
Website with questions and answers
As many kinds of initiatives exist where employers join forces on the labor market, ACM has created an extensive ‘Questions & Answers’-page about the health care labor market (in Dutch). In that way, ACM helps create certainty for employers, salaried health care workers, and independent contractors in the health care sector.
See also
Collaborations among health care employers on the labor market (in Dutch)
Verkennend onderzoek naar werking markten medische hulpmiddelen (report is in Dutch only)