FRANCE The

Job Creation
NETHERLANDS
Jobs for more than 60,000 immigrants
Since April 2000, some 62,000 immigrants have found jobs thanks
to an agreement between the Ministry of Employment, the
Ministry of Justice, MKB-Nederland and the Centrum voor Werk
en Inkomen (CWI). This agreement, which aimed to put ethnic
minorities to work in small and medium-sized enterprises, came to
an end on 1 January 2003. By the end of 2002 SMEs had reported
a total of 78,000 vacancies to the CWI under the agreement, a
higher figure than expected. The agreement was originally
concluded for a period of one year, but has been renewed twice.
This outcome was the result of personal service. Employers could
ring a special telephone number to report a vacancy and a CWI
staff member would then look for appropriate candidates. Within
72 hours the employer would be sent one or more suitable
immigrant candidates for the job. The CWI staff member would
then accompany the candidates during the application process. If
the process led to an employment contract, the CWI staff member
would regularly drop in to see how things were going. Employers
and immigrant workers were both enthusiastic about this one-onone
approach.
In the future, the CWI will continue making extra efforts to help
immigrant job seekers find work. The approach developed during
the agreement has, in the meantime, become part of the normal
procedure. The aim is for employers at small and medium-sized
companies to continue giving immigrant employees the same
chances as they did when the agreement was still in force. An
agreement was also concluded with large companies to pursue a
multicultural personnel policy; it runs until June 2004.
Improving the re-employment market
Minister De Geus and State Secretary Rutte, both responsible for
Social Affairs and Employment, want to further improve the
market for re-employing unemployed and partially workincapacitated
individuals. The basic idea is to give the market
maximum room for growth, to keep Government interference to a
minimum and, in the long run, to compensate re-employment
firms on a performance basis as much as possible. The jobs found
must be long-term jobs. This is considered achieved if the
“customer”, after going through the re-employment process, holds
a regular job for at least half a year. There is sufficient room for
the contracting parties to ensure that certain groups for whom
mediation is more difficult do not end up left on the sidelines.
They can factor this into their price.
This is the result of the memo entitled “Towards a re-employment
market that works” which outgoing Minister De Geus and State
Secretary Rutte sent to the Second Chamber in late 2002, along
with the “Re-employment market trend report”. In connection
with the new Structure for the Execution of Work and Income
(SUWI), the re-employment market was fully privatised, starting
in 2002. This means that municipalities, the Uitvoeringsinstituut
Werknemersverzekeringen (UWV) and employers commission
private re-employment firms to help unemployed, ill and partially
work-incapacitated individuals get back to work.
The Government is working hard to achieve an open market
without barriers to access. In the Government's view, it is possible
to gradually create just such a market. The decision was taken to
privatise the re-employment market because it is expected that
market forces will encourage efforts to get individuals on benefit
back to work. More specifically, people at the lower end of the
labour market who are still not qualified enough for work can
benefit from this.
The “Re-employment market trend report” goes into exhaustive
detail on the current state of affairs on the re-employment market,
comparing it with the situation at the end of 2000. The market –
thanks in part to an increase in the number of companies that offer
re-employment services – has doubled in the space of three years,
and 10% of the firms have merged. According to estimates, the
municipalities, UWV and private customers purchased 160,000
“schemes” for the unemployed and partially work-incapacitated
from re-employment companies in 2001.
The report sketches a picture of a market that is developing in the
right direction. The approach taken is pragmatic and there is
growth. However, a totally free market and full transparency have
still not been achieved. Not enough information is available on the
results of re-employment efforts, the price/quality ratio and the
relevant characteristics of customers. Costs are mainly defrayed in
accordance with the effort required. Performance-based payment
is slow to get off the ground.
Companies that help people get a job or get back to work must
compete with each other on a freely accessible, honest and
correctly operating market. In addition, the availability of good,
independent market-related information must not only make the
“re-employment market” clear to “re-employment companies”, but
also to customers: i.e., municipalities, Uitvoeringsinstituut
Werknemersverzekeringen (UWV) and private employers.
Companies that win public contracts via well-structured
contracting procedures must ultimately be compensated on the
basis of their performance. There should also be latitude for
higher levels of compensation if more permanent placement
results are achieved. It must also be possible to pay re-employment
firms more for placing those groups for which mediation is more
difficult, so that they do not end up marginalised.
In this connection, outgoing Minister De Geus of Social Affairs
and Employment informed the Second Chamber in late December
2002 that UWV will reimburse – on a “no cure, no pay” basis –
around 40% of the schemes to help those receiving unemployment
benefit and (partially) work-incapacitated individuals get back to
work, and will do so by 1 July 2003. The contracted reemployment
firms will then only be paid if they are able to place
the customers in long-term jobs, i.e. jobs lasting at least six
months. The proportion of these “performance-related contracts”
will continue to rise gradually in 2003.
Performance-based financing is possible for most new UWV
customers. Around 70% of them are not that far removed from the
labour market and are therefore attractive to re-employment
companies. With regard to those who are further removed from
the labour market (30% of new UWV customers), re-employment
companies will be reimbursed a large proportion of the costs of
their efforts. As Minister De Geus emphasises, this prevents reemployment
companies from working solely on behalf of those
customers who are not very far removed from the labour market,
leaving those with fewer opportunities stuck on the sidelines.
28 Spring 2003 | European Employment Observatory Review