The film below explains what the rules are if you live in Germany, work in the Netherlands and become ill.
Continuation of pay
If you work in the Netherlands and become ill, your employer will continue to pay your wages. If you have a permanent contract, your employer will continue to pay your wages for 104 weeks. If you have a fixed-term contract, your employer pays you until the end of the contract (with a maximum of 104 weeks).
Your employer is legally obliged to continue paying 70% of your gross salary. Most collective agreements (CAO) state that you are entitled to 100% of your gross salary during the first year of sickness.
The employer has an obligation to continue paying wages for a very long time. This is also the reason why the employer has an interest in checking whether you are sick or not. He also has an obligation to get you back to work. For this purpose, he has hired a health and safety service (ARBO service) which employs doctors who carry out checks, for example, if you are ill for a long time.
Sickness allowance with unemployment
Do you have a fixed-term employment contract and are you still sick at the end of your employment? Then your employer reports this to the UWV (Agency for Workers’ Insurance). The UWV then pays a sickness allowance. This benefit is 70% of your gross salary.
Employers in the Netherlands can also choose to bear the risk against sickness of their employees themselves, as a so-called ‘own risk carrier’. This means that employers do not pay contributions to the UWV, and consequently the UWVdoes not pay a sickness allowance to employees in case of illness, but the employer does. You then receive sickness allowance from your employer.
Have you become ill and at the same time terminated your employment relationship, as is the case with many temporary workers, for example? In this case you will receive the sickness allowance directly from the UWV.