A Temporary Contract Can End, but the Employer’s Reason Still Matters

Dutch employers must separate a lawful expiry date from a sickness-related decision not to renew.

It is late afternoon, and an employer is rebuilding next month’s roster. One temporary worker has been absent several times. Colleagues have covered the hours, customers have waited, and the owner has returned to the floor. The contract expires soon. Not renewing it feels like the simplest way to restore order.

The contract may indeed end on its agreed date. UWV confirms that a fixed-term contract can expire while an employee is sick. An employer does not have to renew it merely because the employee is ill.

Yet the expiry date answers only one question. The reason for withholding another contract answers a different one. That distinction matters when absences may be connected to a disability or chronic illness. The practical pressure is real, but pressure does not settle the employment decision.

The contract and the motive

A recent court signal has brought this boundary back into view. Dutch law already draws the line clearly. Article 4 of the Equal Treatment of Disabled and Chronically Ill People Act prohibits discrimination when employers offer, enter into or end employment relationships.

The risk often enters through ordinary workplace language. A manager writes that someone is “difficult to plan”, “not dependable enough” or “too often unavailable”. Those words may describe a genuine staffing problem. They can also become shorthand for symptoms and absences connected to a protected condition.

I read this as a governance problem before it becomes a legal dispute. The employer must keep separate what small teams naturally mix together: the contract date, the employee’s performance, the effect on the roster, functional work limits, possible adjustments and the actual reason for non-renewal. When those matters collapse into one irritated sentence, the company loses clarity.

Small teams feel absence directly

In a large organisation, another department may absorb a missing day. In a business with six employees, one absence can cancel an appointment, delay a repair or leave the owner serving customers. Overtime appears quickly. So does frustration. Nobody should pretend that repeated absence has no commercial effect.

But continuity planning and employment selection are not the same decision. The business may need better cover, wider task-sharing or more realistic customer promises. Those measures address operational concentration. Selecting one worker for exit because illness affects the schedule raises another question entirely.

Return to the owner with the roster. The useful pause comes before the non-renewal message is drafted. Was the worker’s performance otherwise satisfactory? Which duties were affected? Were different hours, adjusted tasks or workplace arrangements considered? What information came through the occupational-health route?

A small employer does not need to diagnose the worker. It needs to understand work capacity without turning private medical information into office discussion.

The middle stage matters

Dutch reintegration rules require employer and employee to work actively on a return during sickness. Depending on the circumstances, this can include adapted duties, different hours, workplace changes or suitable work. Not every short absence calls for the full long-term sickness process. Still, examining functional options early gives the employer a better record and a more useful conversation.

Article 2 of the same Act also addresses effective adjustments where needed, unless they create a disproportionate burden. For a small company, proportionality matters. An adjustment that is simple for a large employer may be genuinely difficult in a three-person operation. That does not remove the need for review. It makes an honest record of the options more important.

The written notice deserves equal care. For fixed-term contracts lasting at least six months, the employer generally must state in writing, no later than one month before expiry, whether the contract will continue. Missing or delaying that notice can lead to a statutory payment.

Sending the notice on time solves the timing issue. It does not clean up the reasoning behind the decision. The notice, internal emails and meeting notes should tell the same factual story. A polished letter will not help much if a manager’s messages show that sickness itself became the selection criterion.

What the company should be able to explain

A careful employer can explain why a contract ends without collecting unrestricted health details. The relevant business record concerns the role, performance, staffing need, functional limits, adjustments considered and occupational-health input. Diagnosis belongs in the medical domain, not in an informal management spreadsheet.

The financial boundary also needs attention. While a temporary contract remains active, wage-payment and reintegration duties continue. If the employee is still sick when the contract ends, the employee may enter the Ziektewet system. When the employee has been continuously sick for more than six weeks at the end date, a reintegration report is generally part of the handover to UWV.

None of this means that every sick employee must receive another contract. Nor does every chronic condition produce the same legal result. The employer should be able to show that a lawful end date was not used to conceal a prohibited reason.

The owner can then return to the roster with a cleaner decision. Cover the shifts as a business problem. Review work capacity through the proper route. Decide on continuation using reasons that can withstand calm reading later. A temporary contract has an end date, but responsibility does not end with the calendar.

The data, sourcing, and analysis behind this article were conducted by Linda Pavan Geraedts. AI was not used to identify sources, build the factual basis, or produce the analytical judgment contained here. AI was used only as a drafting aid. The final English text was personally reviewed, edited, and approved by Linda Pavan Geraedts before publication.

References

• Tijdelijk contract vanwege ziekmeldingen niet verlengd, recht op billijke vergoeding · Salaris Vanmorgen
• Rechtspraak - Verified court signal: non-renewal, chronic illness and fair compensation
• Wettenbank - Statutory prohibition on disability and chronic-illness discrimination in employment
• UWV - Expiry of a fixed-term contract during sickness
• Rijksoverheid - Written notice and the end-of-contract record
• UWV - Re-integration duties in temporary employment
• Rijksoverheid - Handover to UWV when a temporary contract ends during sickness
• CBS - Current sickness-absence context