Dear Rechtswinkel.nl,

I am a student coming from another EU member state, but living, studying and working in the Netherlands. I normally study at a Dutch university, but during the weekends I have a part-time job in one of the restaurants of a multinational company. The past couple of weeks a lot of things have happened though as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and the measures taken by the national and European authorities to deal with the issue. On the 14th/15th of March, the Dutch government announced that all shops, restaurants, and cafes should close down. As was the one I am working in. For a couple of weeks, most of the students like me who have a part-time job there waited to see what other measures are going to be adopted and whether we'll be able to go back to work or not. As the universities were already closed we didn't have something else to do other than our part-time job. While the time was passing though and the COVID-19 cases were raising up all over Europe, some of us decided to go back to our home countries. As such, we informed the company's administration and our superiors that we would like to go back to our families and they let us know that going back to our home countries would mean that we are unavailable to work since we would be in another country and as such we would have to take a mandatory unpaid leave. According to them, they only have to cover our salaries only if we were in the Netherlands and available to work. To some of us, they gave an indication of how long the unpaid leave would last while to others they didn’t. After that, as our unpaid leave was about to end at the mid of April, most of us came back to be available for work in case the restaurants were opening again. The thing that we didn't know though was that the administration extended our unpaid leave without either informing or asking us whether we are back in the Netherlands or available to work. As a result, when the salaries for April were paid on the 1st of May we didn't receive anything. After emailing them about that, they argued that we weren't in the country, and as such, we were unavailable to work, even though they never called us to show up at work or asked us if we are back in the Netherlands. At the same time, they argued that people living in Belgium were available to work even though in another country and as such they got paid, while people going to other EU member states weren't. According to them, Dutch law only obliges them to pay the employees which were in the country.

We kindly seek your advice on what we should do. A lot of the students to whom this happened don't know their rights and as a result, they don't know how to react. Not getting our monthly salary makes it extremely difficult for us to pay our tuition fees, rent, and bills. Especially in this case that we hadn't been informed about the extension of our unpaid leave and we weren't expecting it. After contacting the Your Europe Advice they guide us to contact you. We've also contacted the European Labor Authority, but we are not sure whether that's the relevant body to deal with our case.

Looking forward to hearing from you.