Netherlands: new agreement for the compensation of a burned out employee

These are the highest damages ever awarded for burnout ever obtained by the FNV’s Bureau of Occupational Disease (Bureau Beroepziekten, BBZ).  In 2009, the Hertogenbosch court ruled that the employer, Nieuwe Hollandse Lloyd, an insurance company, had to take account of its employee’s risk of burnout – a major verdict which has now set precedents (see our dispatch No.  090920).  The plaintiff, an accountant who worked 60 hours a week for 25 years, sometimes up to 80 hours, was declared completely unable to work in 1997 when he was aged 52.  That year, he launched a procedure, with the FNV’s support.  It took the union’s lawyers over two years to negotiate these damages, after the company won on appeal in May 2010.  In the end, the employer accepted to pay €370,000.  Marian Schaapman, head of the BBZ, said this agreement is going to become a landmark and shows that “businesses can no longer do as they please.”  Beforehand, the highest damages ever paid for burnout in the Netherlands amounted to €237,000, also negotiated by the BBZ in July 2007 for a former consultant in the same insurance company (see our dispatch No.  070653).  Burnout cases are increasing quickly in the Netherlands, because of the economic crisis and new technologies (see our dispatch No.  100381).