which employees may submit an information request about compensation

Employees may ask, not only their representatives

The right to request information about remuneration lies with the individual employee, not exclusively with works councils or trade unions. Article 7 of Directive (EU) 2023/970 formulates it as a right of employees themselves: they can receive information about their own remuneration level and about the average remuneration levels, broken down by gender, for categories of employees performing the same work or work of equal value. An employee therefore does not need to go through an employee representation body to exercise this right, although the Directive may also assign a role to employee representatives as a channel through which the request is made.

For an employer, this means that a request can in principle come from any employee, and that the question "is this a valid request" is usually less relevant than the question "what exactly must I provide". That second question returns to an employee asks about average remuneration — what must I provide. What is not yet fixed in Dutch legislation at this moment is the precise form in which this right is regulated here: whether the request must be submitted in writing, for example, through whom it runs within the organisation, and what deadline applies to the response. This will be elaborated in bill 36949, which at the time of writing is still under consideration.

Basis in the Directive, elaboration in the bill

Article 7 of Directive (EU) 2023/970 forms the core: it grants employees the right to request information about their own remuneration and about average remuneration levels by gender from their employer. Because a Directive does not have direct effect like a Regulation, this right must be transposed into Dutch legislation — this happens in bill 36949, the Wage Transparency Directive Implementation Act. As long as that bill has not yet been adopted, the exact national procedure — including who within the organisation receives and handles the request — is not yet definitively established, even though the circle of beneficiaries (employees) can already be derived from the Directive. This also directly relates to the question of how an employer must respond when an employee is treated differently after such a request, a situation that is addressed at can I treat an employee differently after they asked about salary.