Wage freeze at refusal suitable labour

Imagine this: one of your employees is partly incapacitated for work. According to the reintegration obligation you as an employer must offer him suitable labour. What happens however, if this employee refuses to do this labour? Are you able to stop his wage completely or only partially?

Complete or partial wage freeze

The jurisdiction on this matter differ enormously. There are two lines that the kantonrechters follow. The first one follows the Amsterdam Court of Appeal 2005, which decided that if an employee does not cooperate with his reintegration, the employer can only freeze the wage of the hours that he doesn’t perform the reintegrating labour, without a good reason. The Arnhem-Leeuwarden Court of Appeal however, ruled in 2013 that the complete salary can be frozen in 2013.

The Supreme Court

Eventually the subdistrict court judge in Utrecht posed prejudicial questions to the Hoge Raad about the question; does the continued paying of wages need to be completely or partly frozen when an employee does not fullfill the labour. The Supreme Court decided their path to continue on just recently

Complete freezing of wages when the suitable labour is refused

The Supreme Court ruled that the employer can freeze the wages completely if the employee refuses to perform suitable labour. She came to this judgement by putting the law and the words in the law first. Article 7:629 section 3, part c of the Dutch Civil Code rules that the employee has no right to receive wages during the time in which he does not perform the suitable labour.
Furthermore the Supreme Court found it important that the freezing of wages is meant as a sanction. To be effective, the wages need to be frozen completely.

Circumstances of the case

Watch out though: the Supreme Court ruled that not all circumstances are enough to freeze the entire salary. A complete freezing of wages can be unjustified when the reasons are unreasonable and unfair. In that case only part of the wages can be frozen. The future will decide when this is the case.

More information

Would you like more information on this subject? Contact our attorney mr. Suzanne van Dijsseldonk