Spanish migrants are hired by temporary employment agencies to work in the Netherlands’ sprawling logistics hub, only to find that the reality of their working and living conditions is not what they were promised.
María José Carmona is a journalist specialising in social and human rights.
Cross-posted from Equal Times
In 2014, lawyer Rafael Polo was working in the Labour and Migration Department of the Spanish Embassy in the Netherlands. His job was to offer legal and employment advice to Spanish nationals who had been arriving in growing numbers since 2007, when the economic crisis pushed Spain’s unemployment rate above 20 per cent.
In 1996, there were around 28,000 Spanish citizens living in the Netherlands. After the crisis, that figure had risen to nearly 40,000. Most had come in search of steady jobs and salaries three times higher than what they could earn back home. Or so they believed – until they found themselves in Rafael’s office. “The stories they started to tell us were shocking and left us overwhelmed,” he tells Equal Times.
These stories often followed a similar pattern: young people recruited in Spain through temporary employment agencies to work in logistics warehouses. They had all been promised good wages and decent accommodation. But as soon as they arrived in the Netherlands, they faced precarious working conditions, lower pay than expected, and miserable accommodation – often in campsites, barracks or overcrowded flats. Their situation was so desperate that many, having exhausted all other options, turned to the Spanish Embassy for help to survive, or at the very least, to return to Spain. Rafael was stunned. “The Embassy wasn’t prepared to handle the scale of need.”
A system full of grey zones
“They told me: ‘Come over, we’ll pay you €3,000, provide a car, provide a house.’ That’s how they tricked all of us,” says S. He arrived in the Netherlands in 2017, having found a job offer just like everyone else – online. Small agencies or private individuals in the Netherlands recruit workers, offering terms, either verbally or through documents with no legal standing, which turn out to be very different from the contracts they later sign on arrival – contracts written entirely in Dutch.
The same year S. arrived in the Netherlands, a group of Spanish researchers documentedfor the first time the entire system designed to supply large logistics hubs, like the port of Rotterdam, with a steady flow of cheap and precarious labour: interchangeable, and always available. This model is sustained by a vast network of temporary employment agencies operating on the margins of legality – never fully crossing the line, but always operating in a legal grey area.
“As soon as you arrive, they take you to their office to sign a contract. But it’s not a normal one, it’s hourly based,” says S. He is referring to zero-hour contracts, which have been criticised for their precarious nature by the European Parliament and the EU Court of Justice, though they remain legal in countries like the UK and the Netherlands. These contracts offer no guarantee of working hours, and therefore no guarantee of income.
“This type of contract is actually legal in its initial phase. It’s designed for young people who want to work a few hours on weekends, but it has become widespread,” explains Pablo López, professor of sociology at Complutense University of Madrid and co-author of the research project on the new wave of Spanish migration to the Netherlands. “Illegality creeps in when the contracts are extended through loopholes, such as transferring workers between different temporary employment agencies. Companies seek out unregulated spaces to avoid breaking the law outright, while also not abiding by it.”
López’s research revealed that Dutch temporary employment agencies deliberately hire more workers than they need, creating a ‘labour surplus’ where shifts are allocated via an app. As in platform-based jobs, an algorithm assigns schedules and working hours. Meanwhile, workers live in constant anticipation, waiting to be chosen. “It’s not a flaw that can be fixed, it’s a conscious strategy to manufacture waiting time and uncertainty, keeping workers perpetually on standby,” says López.
That’s why the pay often falls short of what was promised. Shifts are unpredictable – some weeks bring 40 hours, others barely half that. And no one ever explains why.
“These practices fall into a legal grey area,” she says. “But in reality, they violate workers’ fundamental rights, leaving people waiting while unpaid, without clear information about their contracts, and with no guaranteed days off.”
Housing
“My house was meant for four people, but there were seven of us living there, with one bathroom and just a single stovetop,” says V., who tried her luck in the Netherlands in early 2025. “I had a room to myself, but it was tiny, with just a locker instead of a wardrobe. I couldn’t even fit all my things in it.”
The cramped, rundown house V. shared with strangers was nothing like the accommodation she had been promised back in Spain. But her case is far from the worst. Some workers end up confined to campsites, hostels, or holiday parks converted into makeshift camps for foreign labourers. These sites are often in poor condition, offer no privacy, and aren’t recognised as official residences – meaning occupants can’t even register their address. And yet, they still have to pay. Each week, temporary employment agencies deduct rent from workers’ wages, along with charges for medical insurance and other expenses like transport. “They took money from me for things I didn’t even understand. In the end, you’re left with nothing,” laments V.
“Even so, the main problem, the most serious one,” says Rafael, “is when people lose their jobs.” In the temporary employment sector, this can happen at any moment. Standard contracts often include an “agency clause” that allows employers to dismiss workers without notice or explanation. “With a single signature, they lose not just their job, but also their home. There’s no chance of finding alternative housing, as the rental market in the Netherlands is extremely tough. And in some cases, they don’t even have the money to return to their home country. People are left completely in the dark. No one explains anything. They’re treated like disposable labour. Many came to our office asking what they could do, but we had nothing to offer. Some of us civil servants even ended up paying out of our own pockets so they could get back to Spain.”
“We see it as a form of exploitation”
The research led by Pablo López in 2017 estimated that around 50,000 Spaniards were caught up in this system. Even then, the authors warned the real number was likely much higher, since at least 30 per cent of migrant workers don’t appear in official records due to not being registered as residents. In any case, the scale and seriousness of the situation were enough to bring it to public attention.
Spanish and Dutch media began to pick up on the story. Once the silence was broken, complaints poured in. In 2018, the Spanish Embassy in the Netherlands received 487 individual and collective complaints related to the issue. The Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs was even forced to publish a series of warnings on its website, including: “Do not accept a contract that isn’t in Spanish,” and “Make sure you work at least 35 hours a week. With any less, you won’t earn enough to live in the Netherlands.”
Complaints also reached organisations like Fairwork, which supports migrant workers in the Netherlands who are victims of exploitation. “We consider these to be cases of exploitation too, but Dutch legislation is very restrictive in this area. For a case to legally qualify as exploitation, three conditions must be met: the worker must be unpaid or severely underpaid, the working conditions must be deplorable, and there must be coercion. Very few cases meet the coercion requirement, or it’s extremely difficult to prove,” says María Bruquetas, a member of Fairwork and president of the Council of Spanish Residents (CRE) in the Netherlands. “It’s really like an iceberg,” she adds. “What you see at the surface are the clear-cut cases of exploitation, but beneath lies a vast grey area.” Once again, this same ambiguous shade comes into focus.
Spurred by growing complaints – not only from Spanish workers but also from other groups of migrants and refugees facing even more serious abuses – Emile Roemer, a representative of the Socialist Party in the Dutch House of Representatives, launched his own investigation. The findings, published in 2020 under the title No Second-Class Citizens, criticised the government for its lack of oversight over the temporary employment sector. With more than 20,000 agencies operating across the country, the sector had been left to regulate itself, moving unchecked through a system with little transparency or accountability.
Roemer’s critical report helped pave the way for a series of reforms. Measures were introduced to encourage workers to register with local authorities; a national register and quality certification system for temporary employment agencies was proposed; dismissed workers were granted the right to remain in their accommodation for up to four weeks after losing their job; and a guaranteed minimum income was established for the first two months of their stay in the country.
“Here at the Spanish Embassy, we greatly value the work of the Roemer commission. There have been improvements in the regulation of employment agencies and in the inspection of accommodation. However, we still receive complaints, albeit fewer than before. The problem has not gone away,” sources at the Embassy told Equal Times.
“People acknowledge that the problem exists, but there hasn’t been much progress in finding real solutions,” admits Rafael Polo, who now works as an independent solicitor. He currently handles a number of cases involving unfair dismissals, workplace accidents, breaches of minimum wage laws – as well as threats and even cases of sexual abuse. “I come across some very tough situations and have very little room to manoeuvre. Sometimes I have to negotiate with companies just to get them to cover the cost of a plane ticket back to Spain.”
Many migrant workers remain unprotected for years – off the radar of the trade unions, both in their countries of origin and in the country where they work.
That’s why the FNV is working to build alliances with trade unions in other countries, including Spain. “Some things have changed,” they say, “but even with new laws in place, we still see agencies ignoring them.” Abuse, they point out, continues to be profitable – and at the heart of the problem is “the widespread use of precarious contracts”.
Bruquetas welcomes the reforms, but agrees there is still a long way to go. “There’s a bill to certify temporary employment agencies, but every time it comes up for approval, it gets postponed. As for zero-hour contracts, it seemed they were going to be banned – but in the end, they were only restricted. In theory, they can now only be used during the first 26 weeks.” The Roemer report, she says, helped to bring about change, “but progress has been slow, and with every new safeguard, agencies find new ways around it.” One such tactic, she notes, is hiring bogus self-employed workers, or exploiting EU rules on posted workers to bring in people from third countries – such as those in Latin America – via other European countries. These workers, she warns, are even more vulnerable.
“We have a European Labour Authority, and inspections are collaborative, but investigating these cases is extremely difficult. That’s why improving legislation alone isn’t enough. What we need is more effective labour inspections and stricter enforcement of existing laws,” she argues. This is especially urgent in a country where ultra-flexibleemployment has become the norm. As Pablo López puts it, the Netherlands may well be functioning as a kind of “social laboratory” for testing the production model of the future – one that is increasingly depersonalised by outsourcing and algorithmic management. “At the centre of it all is a worker who waits,” he says, “activated in real time and deactivated when no longer needed – someone who lives only to work.”
This article has been translated from Spanish by Brandon Johnson
Be the first to comment