Successive employership in the temporary employment sector

Successive employership means that an employee who works for a certain employer, at some point starts working for another employer, while keeping the same job and continuing to work for the same company. In such cases, the new employer is obliged to take into account the employee's previously obtained contracts and periods of work.

There are three situations in which successive employership may apply to a temporary employment contract:

1. The employee first had an employment contract with his employer and then joined the temporary employment agency;
2. the temporary agency worker has been lent out by various private employment agencies to the same user company;
3. the temporary worker first entered the service of the temporary employment agency in order to subsequently enter the service of the regular employer.

Successive employership is important in determining whether you are entitled to a permanent contract. To get a permanent contract as a temporary employee who falls under the ABU and NBBU collective labour agreement, the following is required:

1. you have worked for the employer/agency for 78 weeks; and
2. after those 78 weeks you have
   1. had more than six temporary contracts with your employer with an interruption of less than six months or;
   2. worked for the employer/agency for more than four years, with a maximum interruption of temporary contracts of six months.

Due to successive employership, it may be the case that, despite the fact that you have only been employed by a temporary employment agency for 2.5 years, you are still entitled to a permanent contract because immediately prior to those 2.5 years you had already been working for another temporary employment agency for 3.5 years in the same position and for the same company. Your employment history is then 2.5 years at temporary employment agency X - 78 weeks = 1 year + 3.5 years at temporary employment agency Y = 4.5 years. In order to determine the employment history, the periods in which you worked should be looked at and not the duration of the contracts. The weeks in which no work was done are therefore not counted, regardless of the reason for not doing so.

If you would like further advice on this subject, please do not hesitate to contact us.