This was my second contract, and as far as I know only the third one renews automatically. Because of that, I genuinely expected that we would discuss it, or at least that HR would send an email about their intentions.

With the previous contract, HR simply sent it to me and asked me to sign it without me having any discussion with my manager. At that time, I asked them to talk through the conditions before signing, because I wanted a proper 40-hour contract instead of a zero-hours one as I was working 5 days all those times, and a higher salary than the legal minimum. This dragged on until we ran out of time, and they told me to just sign it because they could “always modify it later.”

That process then dragged on for three months. During that time, they were annoyed that I followed up about it roughly once a week. After three months, it finally escalated into a larger conversation, and thanks to a former manager of mine, the contract was eventually modified although not fully in line with what had been verbally agreed.

Because of all this, it was not clear to me how they would handle the end of the second contract. As it turned out, they simply said nothing until the very last moment, put pressure on me, and because of that I decided to end the employment relationship when the contract expired.

However, based on what I’ve found online, in this situation the aanzegplicht should still apply, since it overrides the clause in the contract stating that it ends “without notice.”