Public procurement and job quality in the Netherlands: institutions, actors and experiments

Dutch public procurement practices have led to problems with high workloads, low wages, low job autonomy and job insecurity. With reference to four sectors – construction, home care, cleaning and regional bus transport – we discuss two main explanatory dimensions: (i) the financial and institutional context; and (ii) the ideas shaping the normative and cognitive frames of actors that influence their policy-making. Procurers (a) prioritise the cheapest procurement contracts; (b) accept no, or only limited, responsibility for workers’ job quality; and (c) show limited knowledge of or at best uncertainty about how public procurement rules allow more attention to be paid to job quality and social aspects. Providers focus mainly on cost competitiveness. Finally, even dominant ideas are not shared by all, and there is (still limited) re-politicisation of job quality issues. This sometimes results in experiments that run counter to the dominant cost-efficiency objective and pay attention to job quality.