FNV & CNV v Temper – Amsterdam District Court, 10 July 2024

Temper operates an online platform through which workers and clients can find one another and conclude agreements for the performance of temporary assignments.

According to Temper's model, the workers operate as independent contractors. A worker can view available assignments on the platform and decide whether to apply for a particular assignment. The client ultimately decides which applicant will perform the work.

Temper provides the digital infrastructure and standard contractual framework through which the relationship is organised. The agreements between workers and clients are generally based on model agreements made available through the Temper platform.

The trade unions FNV and CNV challenged this structure through a collective action. They argued that the workers were not genuinely independent contractors and that Temper was in reality operating as a temporary employment agency.

The unions therefore requested a declaration that the relationships between Temper and the workers qualified as temporary agency agreements.

In an interim judgment of 13 July 2022, the Amsterdam District Court held that FNV and CNV were entitled to bring the collective claims. The Court subsequently considered the substantive classification question in its judgment of 10 July 2024.

The central legal question was whether workers who accepted assignments through the Temper platform entered into temporary agency agreements with Temper within the meaning of Article 7:690 of the Dutch Civil Code.

This required the Court to determine whether Temper should legally be regarded as the workers' employer rather than merely as a platform or intermediary facilitating agreements between independent workers and clients.

In particular, the Court examined whether the relationship contained the essential elements of employment, including:

• the performance of work;

• remuneration;

• an obligation to perform work personally; and

• an employment relationship involving authority.

It also considered the special three-party structure required for temporary agency work, in which the worker is employed by the temporary employment agency but performs work for a third-party client under that client's supervision and direction.

The Court assessed the relationship against Articles 7:610 and 7:690 of the Dutch Civil Code.

Under Article 7:610 BW, an employment contract generally requires that a worker performs work for remuneration for a certain period while working in the service of an employer.

Article 7:690 BW concerns the specific situation of temporary agency work. In that relationship:

1. the worker has an employment relationship with the temporary employment agency;

2. the agency makes the worker available to a third party;

3. this takes place in the context of the agency's business;

4. the work is performed pursuant to an assignment given by the third party to the agency; and

5. the worker performs the work under the supervision and direction of that third party.

The District Court also took account of the broader classification approach established by the Supreme Court in the Deliveroo judgment. The actual working relationship and all relevant circumstances must therefore be assessed rather than relying only on the contractual terminology used by the parties.

However, because the alleged relationship in Temper was specifically a temporary agency agreement, the Court placed particular importance on identifying whether Temper itself fulfilled the role of employer within the three-party relationship.

The District Court concluded that the relationship between Temper and the workers lacked several essential characteristics required for a temporary agency agreement.

Employer authority

The Court considered that Temper did not exercise the necessary formal employer authority over the workers.

The parties agreed that it was principally the clients, rather than Temper, who gave workers instructions concerning the performance of the assignments and supervised the work at the workplace.

Although Temper determined important aspects of how its platform operated and provided standard contractual documentation, this was not considered sufficient by the District Court to establish that Temper itself exercised the required employer authority.

Remuneration

The Court also considered the way in which workers were paid.

The remuneration for an assignment was determined outside the direct relationship between Temper and the worker. Temper did not itself pay wages to the workers in the way a temporary employment agency normally pays its temporary employees.

Workers invoiced the clients for their work. Payments could be processed through the payment service Finqle, meaning that Temper had involvement in the payment infrastructure, but the Court did not consider this sufficient to establish that Temper was the party legally paying the workers' remuneration.

Personal performance

The Court further considered that there was little or no general obligation for workers to perform work personally.

Workers were free to decide whether to register for an available assignment. Before the relevant cancellation period, an accepted assignment could also be cancelled without giving reasons. The contractual structure additionally provided possibilities relating to replacement or substitution.

Taken together, these characteristics led the Court to conclude that the relationship did not contain the necessary elements of an employment relationship between Temper and the

The Amsterdam District Court rejected the claims of FNV and CNV that the workers using the Temper platform had temporary agency agreements with Temper.

The Court therefore concluded that, under the structure assessed in the case, the workers were not temporary agency workers employed by Temper.

FNV and CNV appealed the judgment.

On 16 June 2026, the Amsterdam Court of Appeal reached the opposite conclusion. The Court of Appeal held that the workers did qualify as temporary agency workers and that Temper was their employer for the purposes of the temporary agency relationship. The 2024 District Court conclusion was therefore reversed on appeal.

The 2024 Temper judgment is important because it illustrates the difficulty of identifying the employer in platform-based three-party working relationships.

Unlike Deliveroo, where the central question concerned whether workers had employment contracts directly with the platform company for which the delivery activity was organised, Temper involved a structure in which the workers performed assignments for separate clients obtained through an intermediary platform.

The District Court therefore focused particularly on whether Temper itself performed the functions legally associated with an employer.

The judgment highlights three factors that the District Court considered particularly important:

1. Formal employer authority: whether Temper itself exercised employer authority over the workers.

2. Remuneration: whether Temper itself owed and paid remuneration to the workers.

3. Personal performance: whether workers were required to personally perform work for Temper.

The District Court considered these elements insufficient and therefore rejected classification as temporary agency work.

The later reversal by the Amsterdam Court of Appeal is equally important. It demonstrates that the legal role of a digital platform cannot be determined simply by identifying which party provides day-to-day workplace instructions or technically processes payment. The platform's broader role in structuring and organising the relationship may also be legally relevant.