Long-Term Sick Leave in Rotterdam: The Reintegration Deadlines That Protect You

Why this comes up in Rotterdam

Rotterdam's economy is built on work that physically wears people out: port operations, logistics, terminal handling, construction and shift-based industrial work. That produces a higher share of musculoskeletal and shift-related long-term absence than an office economy does, and a higher share of disputes about what 'suitable work' means when the original job involves lifting, nights or a safety-critical function. The reintegration framework is the same nationwide; what differs here is how often the second track - finding work with a different employer - becomes the real question.

The dates that are fixed by law

These are statutory, not guidance. If your employer has not done them, it is behind - and UWV can respond by extending the employer's obligation to keep paying your wages beyond the two years, which is the sanction that gives the whole framework its teeth.

• Week 6 - the company doctor (bedrijfsarts) must produce a problem analysis setting out what you can and cannot do.
• Week 8 - you and your employer must agree a plan of action, within two weeks of the problem analysis.
• Week 42 - your employer must notify UWV of the absence, no later than the first working day of week 42.
• Week 93 - the WIA application must be filed, with the reintegration report.
• Week 104 - the two-year wage-payment and reintegration period ends, after which WIA may begin.

The first-year evaluation is where cases are won and lost

Somewhere around weeks 46 to 52 there is a first-year evaluation, sometimes called the opschudmoment. The exact week is not fixed in the way the others are, but its absence from the file is a real problem for the employer and can trigger a wage sanction on its own.

It is also the natural point to raise the second track. If returning to your own employer in any adapted form is unrealistic, the obligation shifts towards finding suitable work elsewhere - and starting that late is one of the most common reasons a file fails UWV's review at the end.

What 'suitable work' has to mean

Your employer must make reasonable efforts to enable a return to suitable work - adapting the role, the hours, the workplace, or offering a different role within the organisation. Reasonable is doing real work in that sentence: an offer of a role you physically cannot perform is not an offer, and neither is a role that exists only on paper.

In practice the dispute is usually about the company doctor's assessment of what you are capable of. You are entitled to seek a second opinion from another company doctor, and if you disagree with the assessment underpinning the whole plan, that is the mechanism - not simply refusing the plan, which puts your own position at risk.

You cannot be dismissed for being ill - with two real exceptions

A dismissal ban applies during the first two years of illness. The two exceptions matter: it does not protect you if you refuse to cooperate with reintegration without good reason, and it falls away after the two years, at which point dismissal on the ground of long-term incapacity becomes possible.

That second route runs through UWV rather than the court. Under the Besluit werkgebieden UWV 2024 the application goes to one of UWV's five regional legal services offices, and for long-term incapacity the office is determined by where the employee lives - not where the employer is based, and not centrally.

What this page is based on

• Wet verbetering poortwachter and the Regeling procesgang eerste en tweede ziektejaar
• Article 7:658a BW - the employer's reintegration duty
• Article 38a Ziektewet - the week-42 notification to UWV
• Article 25 WIA - the week-93 WIA application

Checked against wetten.overheid.nl and rechtspraak.nl in August 2026. Dutch employment law changes, and several reforms described here have passed parliament without yet being in force - where that is the case the page says so.

Common questions

Other employment situations

• EindhovenNon-compete clause blocking a moveMany non-competes in fixed-term contracts are void on their face, because the required written motivation is missing.
• UtrechtOn-call and zero-hours workTwelve months of on-call work triggers a duty to offer fixed hours - and cancelled shifts still have to be paid.
• AmstelveenSeconded from a foreign parent companyA foreign governing-law clause does not switch off Dutch dismissal protection. Rome I sets a floor beneath it.