Dutch companies are generous in providing transition leave
09-08-2023
Western Europe
Louis Seesing, RD
Teenagers are pictured as they walk in the streets. Photo AFP, Jonathan Nackstrand
Western Europe
More and more companies are giving employees paid leave if the latter want to change their gender. At major employers such as the government, Philips and the mail company PostNL, this is already enshrined in the collective agreement, according to Dutch employers' organisation AWVN.
There are also companies that offer so-called transition leave outside the collective agreement. For example, retail group Ahold Delhaize -with 130,000 employees, the largest employer in the Netherlands- announced this week that employees who want to go through life with a different gender can apply for no less than 33 weeks of paid leave.
"Whether it is a birth, a move, a marriage, a disability, a death or a retirement - at any time, our employees can turn to Ahold Delhaize for support," the company explains on its website. The new policy also includes tips "for colleagues and managers to provide the right support".
Generous
Most employers where staff can apply for transitional leave are slightly less generous than Ahold Delhaize, though, as a rule, these companies offer a maximum of 24 paid leave weeks, which the employee can spread over a 10-year period.
Transition leave is already enshrined in the collective agreement of insurers, research institutes and universities, among others, AWVN argues.
Collective agreement
According to the Dutch broadcaster NOS -which looked at the industries and companies that have this policy in place-around 400,000 employees can use the facility. Philips assumes that up to five employees, out of a workforce of 11,000, will use the regulation.
Transgender Network Nederland welcomes the fact that the right to paid leave for employees who want to change gender is increasingly found in various collective agreements. The organisation would only prefer that this right be enshrined by law, just as is the case with maternity leave, for example.
Maternity leave
Although the cabinet initially wanted to work on this, Dutch education minister Robbert Dijkgraaf reported in June that no money would be reserved for this. He promised that the cabinet would look at this again in 2024. Not long after, however, the cabinet fell, and not much will come of this intention.
Elise van Hoek-Burgerhart, policy manager of the Christian care organisation NPV, thinks the length of usually 24 weeks of transition leave is disproportionate. "Maternity leave of 16 weeks contrasts sharply with this," she says. "Parental leave is, even if the child is over a year old, completely unpaid. Staff who want time off to provide informal care cannot count on such a generous arrangement either."
She, therefore, thinks that companies offering transition leave are more about making a statement than addressing an actual problem. "Indeed, gender dysphoria, a strong sense of dissatisfaction that someone may have about the gender they were born with, is very rare. So comparatively, few people are helped by it."
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