Cloth falls for controversial payroll constructions
A new law has made payrolls just as expensive as hiring temporary staff. Hogeschool Utrecht and Fontys have their own payroll organizations to circumvent the collective labor agreement for higher professional education. They are now dismantling those sham constructions.
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Ton Kroon has been a security guard at the Hogeschool Utrecht (HU) since 2017. It is not a fat pot. "I earn eleven euros gross per hour with it and do not receive any travel allowance." The work comes in huge waves. "You are not called up for weeks or months, but during the exam periods you sometimes work for weeks of more than XNUMX hours." Kroon, in his fifties who is originally a maths and physics teacher, does not do this work for the money either. He is chronically ill and his earnings are offset against his benefits. "I don't want to sit on the couch at home all day and this is a nice way to stay in touch with education."
Kroon is hired through Interval Service, an employment agency that initially used fairly normal employment conditions. "But at one point the overtime allowances of 20 percent for working in the evenings and 40 percent for weekend work disappeared." There was also a fuss about the payment of hours. On-call workers are legally entitled to a minimum wage of three hours per call, even if they have only worked one hour. "But Interval just didn't pay for those three hours."
At one point, the overtime allowances disappeared from 20 percent for evening work and 40 percent for weekend work
When questions were asked about this during an end-of-year meeting, the invigilators were told that the HU simply did not want to pay more. Most of the 350 to 400 invigilators were not too concerned about this. “It is often the state pensioners who see it as a nice addition to their pension. But there are also invigilators who do this work to keep their heads above water. ” When Kroon went looking for information about Interval, he found out that the HU owns the company that only supplies staff to the university of applied sciences. “It gave me a very strange feeling. Interval appears to be a payroll construction that is designed to cut back on flexible staff. Why is the HU doing that? "
This spring, Kroon terminated his employment contract. “I had to undergo major surgery and the contract was due to expire this fall. Then I would have to take six months off because otherwise I would have to get a permanent position. ” The question is whether he will be able to return after his recovery. As of January 1, Utrecht University of Applied Sciences will stop hiring flex staff via Interval. “The costs that Interval passed on were simply too high,” says Heleen Cosijn, director of Human Capital, HR at HU. "That is why we are going to solve it within our own organization."
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Avoid collective labor agreements
The 2019 annual accounts of Hogeschool Utrecht indicate that Interval had a turnover of 5,8 million euros last year. This involved exactly one hundred full-time jobs, 3,7 percent of the total number. Interval not only employs invigilators, but also other on-call workers and teachers. Cosijn cannot yet say how many people are involved and how many will be employed by the university of applied sciences. “They are not our employees. We are therefore not obliged to take them over from Interval Services ”, she emphasizes. But of course HU also needs invigilators, working students and flex teachers during corona time. Cosijn cannot say anything about how they will be used when Interval stops working in January. "We are still adjusting that."
Those sham constructions have been sealed by the new law
The fact that payrolls have become too expensive for HU University of Applied Sciences Utrecht is not due to Interval's working method, but to the Labor Market in Balance Act (wab) that came into effect in January. That law should make it more attractive to offer employees a permanent contract and make hiring flex workers more expensive. Thanks to the wab, payroll employees have the same working conditions and legal position as the employees of the organization that hires them. Interval employees must therefore be paid according to the HBO collective labor agreement and are entitled to continued payment in the event of illness, holidays, a year-end bonus, pension and redundancy pay. On-call workers are entitled to a contract for a fixed number of hours after twelve months.
Hiring temporary employees via a payroll construction no longer has any advantage due to the wab.
As a result, the curtain falls on the widespread practice in higher professional education to put personnel on the payroll via an additional foundation or a company set up by the university of applied sciences, in order to evade the higher professional education collective labor agreement, circumvent the flex rules or avoid unemployment benefits costs. “Those sham constructions have been properly seared by the new law”, notes AObsector manager Roelf van der Ploeg satisfied.
Grey area
Fontys realized this earlier than Hogeschool Utrecht. Since September last year, the Ooet Foundation (Research and Development Services Eindhoven / Tilburg), managed by the university of applied sciences, has no longer concluded any new employment contracts. The payroll foundation, which employed all temporary staff in the past, had 2015 employees on its payroll at the end of 1300, who together accounted for 330 full-time jobs, 9 percent of all Fontys jobs.
The Ooet construction was already partially dismantled in 2018. Lecturers and other employees who work a fixed number of hours per week were employed by the university of applied sciences. Only on-call workers who performed incidental work, such as security guards and student assistants, were allowed to be hired through Ooet. But those on-call contracts are now also being phased out. Ooet'ers who want to work a fixed number of hours can be employed by the university of applied sciences. If they want to remain on-call, they are hired through a commercial employment agency. At the beginning of this year there were still 299 Fontys employees with an Ooet contract, at the end of the year there are still 55 Ooet'ers left.
We think the HBO collective labor agreement is too expensive and not flexible enough. But you have to discuss this at the collective bargaining table. When that did not yield enough, these constructions were devised
P&O director Frans Möhring, who joined Fontys a year ago, understands how the now unwanted payroll constructions came about. “We think the HBO collective labor agreement is too expensive and not flexible enough. But you have to discuss this at the collective labor agreement table. When that yielded insufficient results, these constructions were devised. ”
But a new wind is blowing now. Fontys keeps pace with social developments and the political elaboration thereof in the Balanced Labor Market Act. As a result, flex becomes less flex, fixed less fixed and the gray payroll area between flex and fixed disappears. “But we would have started that movement even without that law,” says the P&O director. "Fontys is an organization with a social mission, which means that you offer staff more security and do not push the boundaries."
Fontys managers are not all equally enthusiastic about this new policy. “They complain that an employment agency is expensive and are afraid that they will not get rid of permanent staff if the student numbers fall. But Fontys is an organization with 44 students and almost 4800 employees, so you don't have to go grocery shopping like that ”, says Möhring. "If your HR instruments are in order, as a large university of applied sciences you can deal with fluctuations in student numbers."
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Corona assistants
The new wind is also blowing at the Hogeschool van Amsterdam (HvA), which should provide more permanent jobs and a smaller flexible shell, says HR director Cees Endhoven. "We have agreed in the collective labor agreement that structural work requires a permanent appointment, but I also want the flexible shell to be reduced." Nevertheless, HvA Jobservice, the university's internal payroll organization, will not be phased out.
“We are the best boy in the class”, says Jobservice director José Koster. “Before the introduction of the WAB, we already worked in accordance with the HBO collective labor agreement. The only thing that will now be added is a non-statutory supplement to the WW. ” Jobservice is a small organization where seven people work on four full-time jobs. The payroll organization had a turnover of 4,3 million euros last year. To this end, 170 AUAS employees were paid who filled a total of 54 full-time jobs, 1 to 2 percent of the total workforce.
Turnover will increase this year because the university of applied sciences engages Jobservice to appoint an army of student assistants to support teachers in the extra work that the corona measures generate. “The corona assistants can be hired for four or five hours a week, for example to help with the care of first-years,” says Koster. “The knife cuts both ways. The measure ensures that students who have lost their part-time job due to the corona epidemic can earn some money again. With us they get a neat employment contract. They don't know what is happening to them, they are used to something quite different in the hospitality industry. ”
Cees Endhoven does not care that payrolls via Jobservice are just as expensive as hiring temporary staff at the AUAS. “The alternative is that we conclude small, temporary contracts in ten different places in the organization. We think it is more efficient as a small, specialized organization that regulates at a central level. ”
This article appeared in the December 2020 issue of the Education Magazine. Interested in this topic? Also read 'Employed by a letterbox employer'
