Temporary employee or employee with direct employment?

The Recipient’s remuneration is legally established to counter the difference in pay between temporary employees and employees with direct employment. The Recipient’s remuneration applies to all temporary employees, except for employees with a contract for an indefinite period. Temporary employees with a Phase C contract are covered by their own (ABU) payroll.

Certain groups with a distance to the labor market (such as school-leavers or the long-term unemployed) also continue to have a separate wage structure. This also applies to people who are mediated through the Participation Act and people who supervise the employment agency from work-to-work. The NBBU collective labor agreement (article 22) applies the Recipient’s remuneration from the start. In the collective labor agreement this is also called the pay equivalence rule.

Applying the recipient’s remuneration

A correct application of the Recipient’s remuneration requires knowledge of the Recipient’s collective labor agreement. The following points from the Collective Labor Agreement applicable to the hirer must be applied:

• Function group;
• Level of wages;
• Application of working hours reduction;
• Height of the periodical;
• Level and time of initial salary increase;
• Expense reimbursements;
• Surcharges.

Pay attention! If the recipient itself also has its own terms and conditions of employment for its employees, in addition to the CLA, this also applies to the temporary workers who are employed at the recipient. It is in fact a ‘Recipient’s remuneration’ and not a ‘CLA-remuneration’.

The scope of the CLA

First of all, it must be established whether the recipient falls within the scope of a collective labor agreement. Some recipients have insufficiently studied this subject and sometimes fall under the scope of a collective labor agreement. If the recipient does not indeed have a CLA, the temporary employment agency will have to apply the remuneration method of the recipient. This involves looking at the salaries of employees of the company who fulfill the same function and perform the same work. Incidentally, only when these are more favorable than the ABU collective labor agreement or NBBU collective labor agreement.

If the recipient does not have any employees at all and does not fall under (the scope of) a CAO, you fall back on the ABU or NBBU CLA you must use the standard table.

Common mistakes

With regard to the Recipient’s remuneration, the following errors are often made: incorrect hourly wages, wrong job or job group, failure to implement wage increases and periodicals and incorrect application of overtime and bonus percentages. SNCU supervises the compliance with the collective labor agreements. The SNCU looks at the terms and conditions of employment applicable to the collective labor agreements in connection with other statutory provisions.

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