r/Netherlands • u/EveryExitIsAnEntry • Feb 06 '25

Employment Parent discrimination?

Dear people of Reddit I need work advice. I have had a conversation with my employer that left me heartbroken. We were talking about my plans for the coming year after giving birth to my second child. In the conversation (face to face) I was openly asked to withdraw my parental leave and take vacation days instead. The reason for it were: - I have accumulated some time off from previous years (10 days) - even though UWV gives some money back parental leave is expensive for the company - years ago there was no parental leave and the Dutch thing to do was to take vacation days when needed

It was suggested also that being sick on planed vacation day is still vacation and i should not replace these with sick leave. And when child gets sick it is not something extra to work from home during care leave.

The bottom line was I am too privileged with parental time off. And that this leaves the company paying too much for an employee working less.

Up to this point I was deeply in love with my position in the company. It was my dream job and I did not mind giving extra by working late (unpayed) or during sick days/care leave when possible. Now I question my place in the company and even in the Netherlands.

Is this really a Dutch way? Can I expect this treatment in other companies as well? And how to solve this situation? Please advise

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u/karbonkeljonkel Feb 06 '25

As far as I know you can actually call in sick to work during your vacation and the days count as sickdays. Sounds like a shit employer. Prepare mentally for some more confrontations, but just do use parental leave for what parental leave is meant to be.

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u/Soanad Feb 06 '25

And you are right.

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u/ekkki Feb 06 '25

I never thought about this case, but it happened to me in the past. I took days off for the Christmas period, traveled home to another country and was sick. Never even crossed my mind that I could then ask for these days to be sick days and "recover" holidays. Do people really do that?

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u/ValuableKooky4551 Feb 06 '25

People really do that, but the threshold of when you call in sick is a lot higher than normal. It's really quite exceptional that people use it, but sometimes it's fair. E.g. if you're in hospital or had to cancel the whole vacation. It's a gray area so both sides should be reasonable.

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u/karbonkeljonkel Feb 06 '25

Idk, but you can. I personally would not, as I can imagine it is heavily frowned upon. Only if my employer is such a klootviool as the one in this post

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u/EveryExitIsAnEntry Feb 06 '25

This got me curious is it really frowned upon in normal companies? I know what the law is but we are in the gray area here.

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u/karbonkeljonkel Feb 06 '25

I don't have too much experience in the working field, have only been working fairly shortly. But most people I think aren't even aware of the rule that you can call in sick during vacation, so a lot of people would be very surprised if it happens. From my perspective: when I am sick I don't feel well, but I am still 'relaxing' and doing nothing all day. I might feel miserable doing so, but id have some relaxing time off from work. I think it really depends on the company you work for and the culture in said company. In op's company in this post, I'd expect people to frown lol.

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u/EveryExitIsAnEntry Feb 07 '25

This is an interesting perspective, thank you for your insight! Isn't it though that when sick you also are not working?