Partially Disabled Employees: Dealing with a Double Role in the Netherlands
| Author | Trudie Knijn,Mira Peeters-Bijlsma,Ruud Abma,Frits Van Wel |
| DOI | 10.1177/138826271201400202 |
| Published date | 01 June 2012 |
| Date | 01 June 2012 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
86 Intersentia
PARTIALLY DISABLED EMPLOYEES:
DEALING WITH A DOUBLE ROLE
IN THE NETHERLANDS
F V W*, T K**, R A***
and M P-B****
Abstract
In 2006 new social policy legislation was introduced in the Netherlands, under
which employees with chronic health problems may be allocated a ‘double identity’,
being assessed simultaneously as partly sick and partly able to work. Employees in
this situation receive a proportion of disability bene t according to their assessed
loss of earning capacity and are required to engage in paid work in order to earn an
income over and above this. Our central research question is: Which factors elicit
the labour market participation of these partially disabled employees? is article
reports results from a survey of 772 partially disabled employees. We analyse our
data using structural equation modelling and nd that labour market participation
of partially disabled employees is particularly strongly associated with perceptions
of their capability to work and of their chances of returning to work. e results
are considered in relation to Parsons’ (1951) classical theory of the sick role and are
elaborated on the basis of Sen’s (1993, 1999) conceptualisation of capability.
Keywords: activat ion; disabled workers; part-time work; social policy reforms ; social
security
* Dr Frits van Wel (correspondi ng author) is an Associate P rofessor at the Centre for S ocial
Policy and Inter vention Studies, Fac ulty of Social a nd Behavioural Sciences, Utrec ht University,
Heidelberglaa n 2, 3584 CS Utrecht, e Ne therlands; tel: +31302535526; e-mail : f.vanwel@uu.nl.
** Prof. Dr Trudie Knijn i s Professor of Interd isciplina ry Socia l Science and He ad of the Centre for So cial
Policy and Inter vention Studies, Facu lty of Social a nd Behavioura l Sciences, Utrecht Univer sity,
Heidelberglaa n 2, 3584 CS Utrecht, e Netherlands ; tel: +31302531861; e-mail: g.c.m .knijn@uu.nl.
*** Dr Ruud Abma is an Assi stant Professor at the Centre for Soci al Policy and Intervention Stu dies,
Faculty of Soc ial and Behavioura l Sciences, Utrecht Univers ity, Heidelberglaan 2, 358 4 CS Utrecht,
e Netherla nds; tel:. +31302534742; e-mail: r.abma@uu .nl.
**** Mira Peeters-Bijl sma was a researcher on t he project; tel: +31302531408; e-mail: mi rapeeters@live .nl
e authors ack nowledge the nancial suppor t for the research from SIG (Stichti ng Instituut Gak),
the Netherlands.
Partial ly Disabled Employees: Dea ling with a Double Role in th e Netherlands
European Jour nal of Social Secu rity, Volume 14 (2012), No. 2 87
1. INTRODUCTION
e Netherlands, like many other countr ies, has introduced several reforms of
disability policies since the 1980s. Reforms have been implemented to increase
e cacy, to restrict funding levels, to subsidise employment and to restrict access.
ese initiatives, taken in the 1970s and 1980s in the context of the Disability
Insurance Act (DIA or Wet op de Arbeidsongeschiktheidsverzekering, WAO 1967),
appear to have been successful in achieving their aims by the mid 1990s. At that
time there was a low in ow into the scheme, a high out ow and high rejection
rates (OECD 2003). However at the end of the century, and in spite of considerable
e or t, the country again witnessed a rapid increase in the number of employees on
disability bene ts, wh ich reached a maximum of nearly a million bene ciaries, out
of an active labour force of eight million, in 1999 (Aarts et al. 2002; Smulders and
Nijhuis 1999).
In-depth studies by t he OECD (2003) on disability policie s show a wide variety of
disability bene t systems across countries. ey vary in orientation (compensation
or integration oriented), in legislative frameworks, employer’s obligations, access
criteria, and re-integration programmes. e Netherlands is characterised in t hese
reports as a devia nt and hybrid regime; in contrast to many other c ountries, disability
bene t in the Netherlands also encompasses work injuries; it has a two-tier system
for those who have and have not contributed via premiums, and reforms have been
accelerated from the 1990s to the present. Until rec ently, the regime was characterised
as reactive to old social risks, protective in its compensation for medical conditions
resulting from heavy work and, in particu lar, for locking claimants in, instead of
supporting them to return to the labour market (Snel and Linder 2008; Wilthagen
2002). ere are several contextual factors wh ich provide a background to t he recent
reforms. First is the fact that the system no longer ts the new categories of DIA
recipients – mainly women – who o en su er f rom ‘bu rn- out ’ or m enta l pr oble ms du e
to heavy workloads or social relations at work (Aarts et al. 2002). Secondly, changes
in the post-industrial Dutch l abour market, resulting in increase d amounts of exible
and part-time work, o er opportunities for a smooth re-integration of par tially
disabled workers. e labour market was transformed within a few decades f rom an
economy where full-time male workers predominated to one which included well-
regulated par t-time jobs in which bot h men and women participated. e Wassenaar
Agreement of 1982 (Visser and Hemerijck 1997), developed initial ly as an agreement
between employers and employees to reduce unemployment by job redistribution v ia
part-time work protection, produced a steep rise in the number of part-time jobs.
In more recent times, many employers and employees have become accustomed to
the presence of part-time workers, most workplace cultu res are well suited to dealing
with part-time col leagues, and a variety of so cial security bene ts have gradually been
adapted to protect against disruptions to part-time workers’ incomes. irdly, the
OECD (2 003) arg ues tha t an inc reasin g unders tandi ng of ps ycholog y, and an i ncreas e
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