Sick pay on a zero-hours contract: the starting point
A nulurencontract is an employment contract. That single fact settles most of the arguments people have about it. You are not a freelancer, you are not self-employed, and the protective rules of Book 7 of the Burgerlijk Wetboek apply to you in full, including the right to continued payment of wages during illness.What a zero-hours contract does not give you is an agreed number of hours. Because sick pay is a percentage of wage, and wage follows hours, the absence of an agreed volume is what makes the calculation contentious. Dutch law solves this in two stages: the hours you were actually called up for, and the hours you are presumed to work once a pattern has formed.If you have been called up for a shift and you report sick before or during it, the wage for those hours is owed. That much is uncontroversial. If you fall ill on a day for which you were not called up, the answer depends on how long you have been with the employer and whether a stable pattern of work can be shown.Being on an on-call contract does not put you outside the sick pay system. It changes the basis of the calculation, not the entitlement.
The presumption in article 7:610b BW
Article 7:610b BW contains the rechtsvermoeden van de arbeidsomvang, the legal presumption about the scope of work. Once an employment contract has lasted at least three months, the agreed work is presumed to have the volume of the average per month over those preceding three months.That presumption is the single most useful provision an on-call worker has. It converts a history of shifts into an entitlement. Once the scope of work is fixed at, say, the equivalent of twenty hours a week, sick pay is calculated over those hours whether or not you were on the rota in the week you fell ill.Two qualifications matter. The presumption has to be invoked; it does not apply itself, and an employer will not usually volunteer it. And it is rebuttable: the employer may show that the three-month reference period was not representative, for example because it covered an exceptional peak. In practice the employer needs concrete evidence to displace it, and the burden sits with the employer.What you are paid
Article 7:629 BW sets the floor at seventy per cent of the wage during illness, for a maximum of 104 weeks, and during the first fifty-two weeks the amount may not fall below the statutory minimum wage for the hours concerned. Many collective agreements improve on that, often to full pay in the first year, so the applicable CAO is worth checking before accepting a figure.Because the wage of an on-call worker fluctuates, the reference wage is the average earned over the relevant period rather than a fixed monthly salary. Structural components such as fixed allowances belong in the calculation; genuinely incidental payments generally do not.What a zero-hours contract is, and what it is not
The nulurencontract is one form of oproepovereenkomst, the on-call contract defined in article 7:628a BW. It records that there is an employment relationship but leaves the volume of work open: the employer calls when there is work, and the employee is in principle expected to come.It is not the only flexible form, and the differences matter for sick pay. A min-max contract guarantees a minimum number of hours and caps the maximum, so a baseline exists from day one. An uitzendovereenkomst places you with an agency rather than with the business where you work, which changes who owes the wage. A payrolling construction looks like agency work but carries the terms of the hiring company. Knowing which one you signed is the first step in any dispute about pay, and the contract itself is not always a reliable guide: what matters is how the relationship worked in practice, week after week.Nor is a zero-hours contract a licence for unlimited flexibility. Since the Wet arbeidsmarkt in balans took effect in 2020, article 7:628a BW has attached a set of protections to on-call work that apply regardless of what the contract says.The protections that apply to every on-call worker
- Four days’ notice of a call-up. The employer must call you up in writing or electronically at least four days in advance. A call-up given later does not have to be accepted, and refusing it is not a ground for any sanction. A collective agreement may shorten the period, but not below twenty-four hours.
- Payment for cancelled shifts. If the employer withdraws or changes a call-up within those four days, the wage for the originally called hours remains payable. Cancellation shifts the cost to the employer, which is the point of the rule.
- A minimum of three hours per call. Where less than fifteen hours a week has been agreed and the working times are not fixed, each call gives a right to at least three hours’ pay, even if the work itself takes an hour.
- An offer of fixed hours after twelve months. Article 7:628a BW obliges the employer, once the on-call contract has lasted twelve months, to offer a contract with a fixed volume equal to the average of the preceding twelve months. The offer must be made in writing within a month, and the employee is free to decline it.
An on-call worker who has been with the same employer for more than a year should check whether the written offer of fixed hours was ever made. If it was not, the wage claim runs from the moment it should have been.
What is changing
The Wet meer zekerheid flexwerkers was adopted by the Eerste Kamer on 7 July 2026. It abolishes the zero-hours contract as a form and replaces it with a bandwidth contract, in which a minimum and a maximum number of hours are agreed and the employee cannot be required to work beyond the maximum. Entry into force is set by royal decree and may differ per provision, and no date had been fixed at the time of writing.Until that moment the existing rules described here continue to apply in full. We follow the wider package in our article on labour market reform and the move from zero-hours contracts to structural security.Calculating sick pay step by step
The first three months
In the opening period there is no presumption to fall back on, so sick pay follows the roster. Report sick before or during a shift you had been called up for, and the wage for those hours is owed under article 7:629 BW. Fall ill in a week where nothing was scheduled, and there are generally no hours to pay over.There is one important qualification even here. Many zero-hours contracts contain a clause excluding the employer’s duty to pay wages when there is no work, which the law permits only for the first six months of the contract unless a collective agreement extends it for specified functions. That exclusion concerns the absence of work, not sickness, and it cannot be used to escape the sick pay obligation over hours the employee was in fact called up for.After three months
Once the contract has run for three months, article 7:610b BW allows you to invoke the presumption. The employer must then look back over the preceding three months, take the average volume per month, and use it as the agreed scope of work.The mechanics are straightforward. Total the hours actually worked in the three months before the illness, divide by three to get a monthly average, and convert that to a weekly figure if the employer works in weeks. Someone who worked two hundred and sixty hours across thirteen weeks arrives at an average of twenty hours a week. Sick pay is then calculated over twenty hours, at a minimum of seventy per cent, with the statutory minimum wage as the floor for those hours during the first year.The reference period is the three months of the contract, not thirteen weeks selected by the employer, and it runs up to the moment the illness begins. Where the pattern varies strongly by season, the employer may argue that the period is unrepresentative, and an employee with records of a longer history is in a much better position to answer that argument.Keep your own record of every shift worked. The presumption in article 7:610b BW is only as strong as the evidence of the pattern behind it, and rosters have a way of becoming unavailable once a dispute starts.
Holiday, pension and the rest of the package
The presumed scope of work does more than fix sick pay. Holiday accrues over the agreed scope of work, which means that once the presumption applies you build up holiday over those hours rather than over zero, and you keep accruing throughout the sickness. The holiday allowance and any pension contributions follow the same basis.That has a knock-on effect at the end of the employment. Untaken holiday must be paid out on termination, so an on-call worker who was ill for a long period may have a substantial balance. Our article on statutory leave and holiday entitlement sets out how the statutory and above-statutory days differ, and vacation during sick leave explains what happens if you want to take holiday while the absence continues.Where on-call workers actually lose money
If your contract ends while you are ill, the employer must report you sick to UWV on the final day of the contract. Confirm in writing that it has been done, because the benefit does not start by itself.
Not being called again after reporting sick
Being passed over for shifts after an illness is unlawful disadvantaging, not a legitimate exercise of flexibility. Where the presumption applies, the wage remains owed regardless of whether calls are made. Where the employment relationship is being wound down informally by simply not calling, the employee can invoke the presumed scope of work, put the employer in default in writing and claim the wage over the presumed hours.The claim is subject to the ordinary limitation period, but there is a practical reason to move quickly: the further the reference period recedes, the harder the average becomes to prove. A written demand within weeks rather than months is worth more than a perfect argument made a year later.Long-term illness and mental health
When the absence stretches beyond a few weeks, the framework becomes the Wet verbetering poortwachter and the obligations run both ways. The employee is reported to the arbodienst in the first week; the bedrijfsarts prepares a problem analysis around week six; employer and employee agree a Plan van Aanpak within roughly two weeks of that, appoint a case manager, and evaluate progress at least every six weeks. A first-year evaluation follows around week fifty-two, and the WIA application is made in the second year.None of that is optional because the contract is flexible. The employer of an on-call worker owes the same reintegration effort as the employer of a salaried colleague, including the search for suitable alternative work, first within its own organisation and then, if that fails, with another employer. If UWV finds the effort insufficient at the end of the two years, it can impose a wage sanction extending the payment obligation by up to a year.Mental health absences, in particular burnout and stress-related complaints, are a large share of long-term sickness in the Netherlands and they raise a specific problem for on-call workers: the absence tends to be long, and the reference period from before the illness becomes the only anchor for income. Getting the presumed scope of work established early, in writing, is therefore more urgent in these cases than in a two-week flu.You are never obliged to give your employer a diagnosis. The bedrijfsarts assesses your capacity for work and reports only functional limitations; the employer receives what it needs to organise the reintegration and nothing more. Our guide on reintegration obligations and wage sanctions works through the duties on both sides.What to do when you fall ill
The steps below are the ones that decide whether a claim succeeds. None of them is complicated; all of them are easier to do at the time than to reconstruct afterwards.Report the illness the same day
Follow the employer’s stated procedure exactly, whether that means calling a named manager before a set hour or using a portal. If no procedure exists, send an email or a message so that the report is time-stamped. Report on the first day of incapacity, including on a day for which you were not called up, because the date of the first day of illness determines the start of the 104-week period and of the whole poortwachter timetable.Invoke the presumed scope of work in writing
If the contract has lasted three months or more, write to the employer setting out the average hours over the preceding three months and stating that you rely on article 7:610b BW for the calculation of your sick pay. Attach your own overview of shifts. This single message converts an unspoken assumption into a documented claim.Keep records
Log every call-up and every shift worked, with dates and hours. Keep payslips, rosters, messages about shifts and all correspondence about the illness. If your employer uses a scheduling app, export or screenshot the history while you still have access, because access tends to disappear when the relationship deteriorates.Check the payslip
Look for the sick pay line, often labelled ziektegeld or loon bij ziekte, and check both the number of hours and the percentage applied. Compare it with your own calculation and with the CAO, which may require more than seventy per cent. If the hours are wrong, the presumption has probably not been applied.Put the employer in default
If the payment is wrong or absent, write formally, set out your calculation, refer to article 7:629 BW and article 7:610b BW, and give a short deadline. A demand of this kind is also the step that preserves your position if the matter later goes to the kantonrechter.Get the dispute assessed
Where the disagreement is about fitness for work or about reintegration, either party can ask UWV for a deskundigenoordeel, an independent expert opinion. It is not binding but carries weight, and under article 7:629a BW an expert statement is normally required before a wage claim during sickness can be brought before the kantonrechter. Free first-line advice is available from Het Juridisch Loket, and members can turn to their trade union.Action checklist when sick on a zero-hours contract
| Step | Action | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Report | Notify the employer on day one through the prescribed channel, in writing if possible. | Starts the 104-week period and the poortwachter timetable, and creates proof. |
| Invoke | Claim the presumed scope of work under article 7:610b BW, with your own hours overview. | Fixes the number of hours sick pay is calculated over. |
| Record | Keep rosters, payslips, messages and a log of every shift. | The presumption stands or falls on evidence of the pattern. |
| Check | Verify the hours and percentage on the payslip against the CAO. | Errors are usually in the hours, not the percentage. |
| Escalate | Send a written demand, then consider a UWV expert opinion or legal advice. | Preserves the claim and is a precondition for litigation under article 7:629a BW. |
When the employer denies there is a contract at all
A recurring variation on the theme is the employer who treats an on-call worker as a self-employed contractor, invoices and all, and then refuses sick pay on the ground that there is no employment contract. Dutch law has an answer to that as well.Article 7:610a BW provides that a person who performs work for another for payment, for three consecutive months, either weekly or for at least twenty hours a month, is presumed to do so under an employment contract. Like the presumption about the scope of work, it shifts the burden: the party denying the employment relationship must prove that what really existed was something else.Whether an employment contract exists is judged on the substance of the relationship and not on the label the parties gave it. The classic elements are work, wage and a relationship of authority, assessed against all the circumstances, including how the work is embedded in the organisation and whether the worker runs any real commercial risk. Someone who works set shifts in someone else’s premises, with their equipment, under their instructions, is normally an employee whatever the paperwork says.The stakes are considerable. If the relationship is an employment contract, sick pay, holiday, dismissal protection and pension all follow, and the employer owes payroll taxes and social security contributions it never remitted. This is also the area where the legislature has been active: a statutory presumption of employment based on an hourly rate below a threshold was adopted in 2026, with entry into force to be set by royal decree, and the enforcement moratorium on false self-employment in the tax sphere ended on 1 January 2025.When the contract ends during the illness
Many on-call contracts are fixed-term, and an illness that begins near the end of the term produces a change of paying party rather than an end of protection. On the final day of the contract the employer must report the employee sick to UWV. From the day after the contract ends, the entitlement continues as a Ziektewet benefit paid by UWV, generally at seventy per cent of the daily wage, within the same overall period of 104 weeks.The daily wage is calculated from earnings in a reference year before the illness, which is another reason for an on-call worker to keep payslips. Where the calculation is based on a period with unusually few shifts, the benefit will be correspondingly low, and the decision can be challenged through an objection to UWV within six weeks.Reintegration also changes hands. Once the benefit is paid by UWV, the agency takes over the reintegration role, and the obligations to cooperate run towards UWV instead of the former employer. Failure to cooperate can lead to a reduction or refusal of the benefit, so the correspondence should not be ignored.There is a related point that helps people with a chronic condition back into work. Where an employee qualifies for the no-risk policy, an employer taking them on is compensated through the Ziektewet if they fall ill, which removes much of the financial reason for an employer to hesitate. Employees who fall within it are generally better off saying so when they are engaged.If you were placed through an agency
Where the work comes through an uitzendbureau, the agency is the employer and owes the sick pay, not the company where the shifts are worked. Agency contracts often contain a clause ending the assignment when the hirer no longer needs the worker, and the interaction between that clause and an illness is a frequent source of dispute; the safe course is to report sick to the agency immediately and in writing.Supervision of the sector is tightening. Under the Wet toelating terbeschikkingstelling van arbeidskrachten, agencies must register with the Nederlandse Arbeidsinspectie between 1 November and 31 December 2026, the admission requirement enters into force on 1 January 2027, and enforcement follows from 1 January 2028. Hiring companies will then be prohibited from engaging workers through an agency that has not been admitted, which gives agency workers a straightforward way of checking whether their employer is operating lawfully.Frequently asked questions
The questions below come up most often from on-call workers and from the employers who engage them.What if I get sick right after my three-month anniversary?
That three-month mark is a crucial date. The moment you cross it, the “legal presumption of employment duration” kicks in. If you fall ill right after this point, your employer is legally obligated to look back at the last three months and figure out your average working hours.
This average becomes the very foundation for calculating your sick pay. It’s a safety net, ensuring you have a baseline income to rely on, even if you weren’t actually scheduled for any shifts when you had to call in sick.
Can my employer stop offering me shifts if I report sick?
Simply put, no. Your employer can’t legally punish you for being ill. Once you’ve established a consistent work pattern—especially over three months or more—you have a much stronger claim to a set number of hours.
A sudden, unexplained drop in the shifts you’re offered right after reporting an illness may amount to unlawful disadvantaging of the employee. If you feel this is happening, it’s wise to document everything and seek legal advice to protect your position.
Do I still build up holiday leave while I am sick?
Yes, you absolutely do. While you are off sick, you continue to accrue holiday leave (vakantiedagen) just like any other employee. The law is very clear on this; your right to paid time off is protected while you recover.
Holiday accrues over the agreed scope of work, which after three months is presumed to equal your recent average. So, if your sick pay is calculated on a 20-hour weekly average, you’ll accrue holiday leave based on those 20 hours, not zero.
What should I do if my employer refuses to pay my sick pay?
If your employer denies your rightful sick pay, the first step is always to communicate with them clearly and professionally, preferably in writing.
- State your case: Explain that you believe you are entitled to sick pay. It can be helpful to reference the relevant legal rules, like the three-month average calculation we’ve discussed.
- Provide evidence: Refer to your own records of hours worked to back up your claim for the average calculation.
- Seek external support: If they still refuse to pay, you’re not on your own. You can get free or low-cost assistance from the Juridisch Loket, contact a trade union if you’re a member, or consult an employment lawyer who can help you claim the wages you are legally owed.
