Can an employer refuse a request for more hours?

Questioner

As of March 1st, I will have been working for 5 years at a healthcare institution that falls under the collective labor agreement for hospitals. I have a permanent employment contract and work an average of 8 hours per week as a residential assistant. My hours are used variably, which means that I work weekends of 16 hours (minus 2x half hour break) or sometimes more hours per week. I would like to see my employment contract changed to 16 hours per week. I have now submitted this request to my manager for the third time. The first time (Nov. '18) a suggestion of approval was made because the employer indicated by e-mail that a change was coming by means of longer working hours. This did indeed happen at the time because my work shifts went from 4 hours to 5.5 and/or 8 hours. However, an extension of my employment contract did not materialize and neither did consultation about the extension of my work shifts. That is why a request was made again for a second time (Feb. '19). At that time, my manager indicated by e-mail that due to the subsidy scheme this position was temporary, that an error had been made on my part as a result of which I had been given a permanent position but that it was therefore not possible to change my contract to 16 hours per week. You should know that as long as I have been working there, there have always been various residential assistants working mainly with temporary contracts of varying hours (0 to 20 hours). If a temporary contract reached the legal maximum, someone else would come. Recently this has changed, now several colleagues have also been given an employment contract for an indefinite period. The hours of their employment contract vary up to 20 hours on average per week. Naturally, when I heard this (Jan. '22), I again asked for a 16-hour employment contract. To my utter amazement I have now verbally understood that this request is not being granted because care colleagues or a care colleague (no idea exactly?) have indicated (or has indicated?) that they find it difficult to communicate with me when they experience (experience) a noise. I have never heard anything in this direction before? You can probably imagine that I have become completely unbalanced by this vague rejection. This is also because in the past years I have not once worked with a wrong intention, not once raised my voice, not once used a wrong word, etc. In addition, I also find it incomprehensible that a third party tarnishes my name, the management accepts this blindly, condemns me for this and punishes me by not awarding the extra hours. And all this without me being aware of it. There was a conversation about this, but it was already decided in advance that I would not receive the extra hours, according to my manager. The conclusion was (also from the two managers who were present) that it is not because I am not nice to the residents, but it is because care colleague(s) fail(s) in communication after assumptions that they themselves make! My feeling about the above is confused and unreal, something like: what is happening to me now? I am being treated with great injustice and I am also being treated unequally as a human being! Because I receive a supplementary Wwb benefit, the price I pay for this injustice is great, namely: the difference between being able to do normal shopping or not, and whether or not I get out of the Wwb altogether. Obviously the above injustice is not acceptable to me, so I have the following questions for you: Can my request for an employment contract of 16 hours per week be refused? How can I best deal with the above? Thanks in advance for your response! Yours faithfully,

Lawyer

You have been working for your employer long enough to request a change. A request must be made in writing 2 months before the desired entry. In the request you must indicate the desired change and the time of the change. The employer must (if the company has more than 10 employees) in principle agree to the change, unless there is a compelling business interest. The judge will not readily assume that this is the case. The employer must inform you in writing. If the employer does not decide in time, the request is automatically granted. If the company has more than 10 employees, the employer should have approved your request in principle. You can refer the employer to article 2 'Law on flexible working'. If this does not help, you can seek the help of a lawyer. Please feel free to contact me via my profile if you have any questions or require legal assistance.