Leiden University: Emma van der Vos on curbing income inequality

Excessive remuneration of top executives often sparks heated debate in the Netherlands. Ministers are summoned to Parliament, where they then tend to wholeheartedly condemn the ‘grabbing’ going on at the top of the corporate sector. But that’s where it stops. Tackling excessive remuneration seems to be taboo. ‘Legally speaking, however, there’s no reason for the government to hold back’ says Emma van der Vos, a lawyer working in Amsterdam’s financial district and PhD candidate at the Department of Labour Law and Social Security.

According to Van der Vos, who this week will defend her PhD thesis on the limitations on legal intervention in top remuneration, ‘it is often claimed that there are all sorts of legal complications. Even human rights would be under pressure.’ But it seems that the people who play the human rights card are often very rich themselves, Van der Vos told Dutch newspaper Financieel Dagblad.

Her PhD thesis, however, shows that the Dutch Government has a wide margin to fight income inequality. ‘I’m not against high remuneration. There is a real risk attached to underperformance in certain positions. That said, Van der Vos finds it hard to understand that the income gap has to be so big. There are lots of people who have to search for another job if they are dismissed. Why is that seen as disproportionate among the higher educated? An employment contract is not some sort of life insurance.’