Following five years of disagreement, the social partners in Belgium finally reached agreement on the implementation of the European Directive on the information and consultation of employees. The compromise on the introduction of information and consultation rights in small and medium-sized enterprises was reached in November 2007, statutory propositions for which were drafted in February 2008.
A threefold compromise
On 23 November 2007, the national-level social partners finally reached a compromise for transposing EU Directive 2002/14/EC establishing a general framework for informing and consulting employees in the European Community. Amid a pending political crisis – whereby the Belgian government had still to be elected, only finally taking up office in March 2008 – and in light of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) decision which sentenced the Belgian state to pay substantial fines for its failure to transpose the directive, the core group of national social partners reached agreement (in French, 20Kb PDF) on three specific arrangements to ‘improve the social dialogue in Belgium’. The agreement was accompanied by a demand to the country’s Minister of Employment and Equal Opportunities to inform the European Commission of the agreement before 1 December 2007, thus preventing the further execution of the European judicial procedure against Belgium for the non-transposition of the EU Directive (BE0704019I).
Arrangement for medium-sized enterprises
The first of the three arrangements relates explicitly to the transposition of the EU Directive on information and consultation into Belgian law. In implementing this first arrangement, the social partners reached agreement three months later, at the end of February 2008, on two regulatory propositions, namely:
- a first text amending the current national collective agreement No. 9 (in French, 92Kb Word doc) on the functioning of works councils (ondernemingsraden/conseils d’entreprise) of the National Labour Council (Nationale Arbeidsraad/Conseil National du Travail, NAR-CNT);
- a proposal for a complementary law which would complete the transposition of the EU information and consultation directive.
The new collective agreement and the proposed changes in the statutory law implement the twofold compromise reached in the November 2007 agreement. Accordingly, the law of 4 August 1996 on the well-being of workers in Belgium will be extended with a clause that grants the current Committees for Prevention and Protection at Work (Comités voor preventie en bescherming op het werk/Comité pour la prévention et la protection au travail, CPBW-CPPT) a residual right to employment and business information in companies or establishments with 50–100 workers. In other words, these committees will be granted the information and consultation rights as stipulated in the EU directive and which in Belgium are only currently assigned to works councils in larger companies with over 100 employees.
In addition, in companies or establishments where only a trade union delegation (vakbondsdelegatie/délégation syndicale) is present and with no other information and consultation body, such as a works council or committee, management must supply this delegation with annual information concerning business turnover, profits, employment and labour costs. The delegation also has to be informed and consulted about all decisions which could result in considerable changes in the work organisation or employment relationship.
The revised national collective agreement will be put in place when the necessary statutory revisions have been approved by the parliament. Both provisions – that is, the revised collective agreement No. 9 and the new law – have already been passed by the federal government.
Arrangement for small enterprises
The second arrangement of the November 2007 agreement calls on the sectoral joint committees (paritaire comités/commissions paritaires) to introduce the following provisions before 2010:
- in sectors where no current agreement exists on the introduction of trade union delegations in companies or establishments with 20–50 employees, a framework which provides for this introduction;
- a framework agreement to organise the information and consultation of employees in companies or establishments with 20–50 employees, where no trade union delegation is present.
These agreements will be evaluated by the national social partners before 2010.
Revised provisions for handling of industrial conflicts
A third and final arrangement refers to a planned evaluation, and if necessary a change in the so-called ‘gentlemen’s agreement of 2002’ (BE0204301N), concerning the handling and timing of industrial conflicts. Under this agreement, the employers would avoid using legal procedures until all conciliation attempts had failed, while workers would agree to respect the notice periods required for strike action. When reaching the agreement, the social partners had to take this element into account due to the increase in the number of unofficial strikes, along with the intensified use of judicial procedures since 2004 by employers in the event of strikes and the ongoing debate on the right to strike in services of general interest (BE0705019I). Once again, the agreement refers to the sectoral partners involved in bargaining, who are being urged to improve their rules on mutual respect in the event of an industrial conflict.
Guy Van Gyes, Higher Institute for Labour Studies (HIVA), Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KUL)