What if my collective agreement already requires a job evaluation system?

A collective agreement system is a starting point, not an automatic guarantee

A job evaluation system laid down in a collective agreement can do a large part of the work already, but does not automatically cover everything the directive requires. The directive requires that remuneration is based on criteria that are objective and gender-neutral and that encompass four elements: skills, effort, responsibility and working conditions. Many existing collective agreement systems are built on precisely that logic, because job evaluation as a discipline has worked with such factors for decades. In that case, the system aligns well in substance.

What matters is whether the system is also applied this way in practice: whether all jobs go through it consistently, whether the weighting of the four factors does not happen to favour typical male or female job characteristics, and whether the outcome is traceable. A collective agreement system that is complete on paper but diverges in implementation, or that leaves certain job groups out of the classification, does not automatically meet the requirements. This is not a question that can be answered with yes or no without looking at the system itself — and that assessment is for the employer and, where relevant, for the court, not for an automated check.

Where this follows from: Article 4(4) of the directive

Article 4(4) of Directive (EU) 2023/970 formulates the requirement that remuneration structures be based on objective, gender-neutral criteria, with skills, effort, responsibility and working conditions as the stated elements. The directive does not prescribe a specific system and thus does not exclude an existing collective agreement system, but assesses the result against those same criteria. For the Netherlands, it should be noted that draft law 36949 must still transpose this requirement into national legislation and that the obligations for private employers do not yet apply; for the public and semi-public sectors, direct binding to the directive may already apply, now that the transposition deadline of 7 June 2026 has passed.