The Borstlap report celebrates its third anniversary today and little has been done so far. The committee advised the cabinet to radically reform the labor market, but there is still little evidence of this. And the ONL president Hans Biesheuvel is disappointed.
He still remembers too well the presentation at Fokker Terminal, when then Minister Wouter Koolmees received the report from the Borstlap committee. ‘Then he came up to me with a big smile and patted me on the back, like ‘now it’s going to happen’. But above all, there has been a lot of talk about it and many letters have been written announcing other letters, but I have not seen any actual bills presented in the House.’
And he talks about it. Especially since the current minister of social affairs and labour, Karien van Gennip, says that the labor market must be balanced. “We introduced the Balanced Labor Market Act in 2018, and it clearly hasn’t provided enough balance, it seems.”
Low expectation
According to Biesheuvel, this is the trend: lots of talk, little action. And it doesn’t have much hope. “Unfortunately, I don’t expect anything to really change in the next few years.” And that’s partly because the report is actually outdated after three eventful years, she thinks. “We were unaware of the labor shortage we are facing in 2020 and Borstlap’s analysis was based on the previous ten years.”
And that’s hard to compare, thinks Biesheuvel. ‘Ten years ago we had a credit crunch and very high unemployment,’ he continues. “This is a completely different situation from the current one. In addition, the corona crisis has given people a different view of work organization. Just look at working from home.’
“Red Approach”
Yet it’s not all doom and gloom, says Biesheuvel. “What I found strong in Borstlap, for example, was the horseback approach,” she continues. Not one thing was to be done, but all things were to be done. To avoid such a waterbed. No cherry picking, but look at the job market as a whole.’
And that’s exactly what’s happening now, you see. “It looks like Van Gennip is working on it now, which is why you miss Borstlap’s starting point by tackling him from the entire line.”
Water bed effect
The explosion of self-employed workers that the Netherlands is dealing with is therefore the result of the so-called water bed effect, according to Biesheuvel. “But also with the fact that people – and this also has to do with the corona time – want space to organize their lives differently,” he continues. ‘Don’t forget that a lot has happened in companies. Two corona years, an energy crisis, the invasion of Ukraine, companies therefore have to be extremely flexible. (…) And we really need that agility.’
It therefore does not deny the lucrative nature of being self-employed, given the tightness of the job market. “In the entire Borstlap report, the whole topic doesn’t come up,” he continues. ‘So my big question now is whether the starting points of the Borstlap report are still relevant, because there are some new starting points.’
Source: BNR
Fernando Dowling is an author and political journalist who writes for 24 News Globe. He has a deep understanding of the political landscape and a passion for analyzing the latest political trends and news.
