Wet Samen
The Wet Samen is a Dutch law to stimulate the employment of minorities. The decree exists since January 1, 1998 and stands for Wet Stimulering arbeidsdeelname minderheden, literally translatable as Law Stimulation Labour Participation Minorities.
The law forces employers to hire a reasonable number of minorities. All companies of at least 35 employees should have working staffs that represent the statistical distribution of minorities in society. The Netherlands have a labour inspectorate that monitors the rightful implementation of the regulations.
The goal of the Wet Samen is to fight discrimination on the tight job market and to clarify the causes for minorities struggling to find employment. To the target group of the law belong all those who (or one of whose parents) were born in Turkey, Morocco, Surinam, the Dutch Antilles including Aruba, all of former Yugoslavia, and all other countries in Latin-America, Africa or Asia, except for Japan and former colony Indonesia. All employers are obliged to administrate the country of birth of each employee with the conclusion that he or she does or does not belong to the Wet Samen target group.
In the obligatory annual report, the employer describes the representation of minorities in the company, the development of these statistics throughout the year, and past as well as future measures that have been (or are to be) taken to raise the figures.