Download article in original language : BE0012334FFR.DOC
In September-October 2000, a major strike occurred in public bus transport companies in Belgium's Wallonia region. The strike lasted more than 30 days before the negotiators reached a agreement. The dispute was resolved when the regional government provided more funds to finance pay increases.
In Belgium, the public transport system has been regionalised since the start of the 1990s. In the French-speaking part of the country, Wallonia, "public transport bodies" (Transport En Commun, TEC s) are responsible for providing this service. They are organised in a pyramid structure, with:
The SRWT is an autonomous operator, contractually linked to its parent authority, the Walloon regional authorities. The budgetary resources available to the company are set by a "management contract" between the Walloon government and the SRWT.
TEC employees are not civil servants, but are linked to their employer by a contract of employment, as with workers in the private sector. A national joint committee (No. 308) manages the public transport sector's trade union fund and social fund for the three regions of the country. A regional joint subcommittee (No. 308.2) is responsible for setting pay and conditions for all the employees of the Walloon TECs, both blue-collar and white-collar.
More than 4,000 people work in the various entities of the Walloon TECs, three-quarters of whom are bus drivers. Trade union membership is high, at 98% of the workforce. The General Confederation of Public Services (Centrale Générale des Services Publics/De Algemene Centrale der Openbare Diensten, CGSP/ACOD) affiliated to the Belgian General Federation of Labour (Fédération Générale du Travail de Belgique/ Algemeen Belgisch Vakverbond, FGTB/ ABVV) is the largest union.
In September 2000, a combination of several factors, on top of a general background of discontent in the sector, led the Walloon TEC workers to go out on strike. Simultaneously, the following factors came together:
Industrial unrest is not new in the Walloon TECs - for example, there have been 238 days of local or regional strikes in the past eight years. Issues relating to work organisation have soured the social dialogue. For instance, in certain companies overtime is paid at a premium rate or leads to compensatory time off without problems, while in others, if the worker does not specify the method for remunerating overtime beforehand, it is considered to be voluntary.
Moreover, in addition to their pay demands, bus drivers had problems in getting the arduous nature of their work recognised. They have increasingly been subject to assault, both verbal and physical, when working. In Charleroi, where the rate of assault is the highest among the various TEC companies, a bus was recently hijacked by an armed passenger. In Liège, another passenger held up the bus driver after refusing to pay the sum of BEF 400. There had already been several strikes on the issue of safety. Management denounced the strikers and apparently did not want to recognise the problem. The drivers claimed that they were tired of not being listened to.
The strike started at the bus depot in Jumet (Charleroi). On 25 September, the drivers decided not to take the buses out and stopped work spontaneously. Gradually, the action spread to other bus depots. The first demand of the drivers was for a net pay increase of BEF 10,000 per month (equivalent to a gross hourly increase of BEF 100).
A meeting between the sectors' employers and unions was planned for 26 September in the joint committee, in order to finalise the implementation of the 1999-2000 collective agreement. However, the SRWT refused to negotiate during a strike. It even threatened to penalise the wildcat strike by cancelling the improvements provided for by the previous collective agreement, including an annual bonus of BEF 10,000. The strikers responded by demanding the resignation of the company's management.
At this point, while all the depots were not yet on strike, the unions submitted a strike notice. They were to have many difficulties in calming matters down and keeping control of the situation, and in getting the strikers to set "realistic" demands. "They were furious. We [the union representatives] were asking in our formal demand for a pay increase of BEF 50 gross per hour. They wanted one of BEF 100. The workers said that even if the demands were financially high, they were legitimate," commented Léon Durieu of CGSP/ACOD.
For his part, the Walloon regional transport minister, José Daras (of the Ecolo party) intervened to guarantee the implementation of the 1999-2000 collective agreement.
The situation became a stalemate with a series of sterile meetings, as on the one hand the workers refused to negotiate before having seen concrete proposals, and on the other, the management and Walloon government refused to talk for as long as the strike continued. "I think we started a little too early as the dispute risks being a long one and we will have to hold out," stated Alain Libiu of the Confederation of Christian Trade Unions (Confédération des Syndicats Chrétiens/Algemeen Christelijk Vakverbond, CSC/ACV). Meanwhile, the dispute continued, with no buses running in Charleroi or Liege, while buses elsewhere were operating a reduced service, sometimes free of charge.
In parallel, the Walloon government met to set its budgets. In so doing, the Minister-President of the Walloon region, Jean-Claude Van Cauwenberghe (of the Socialist Party) assured drivers that half of the new resources allocated to the SRWT would go towards a pay increase, but he did not put forward any figures. There was an impasse for as long as the government's response to the unions' demands remained unknown, ie the amount allocated for the pay increase.
In the face of this continuing dispute, the employers' side took several unsuccessful initiatives to get the strikers back to work:
In the face of the failure of these tactics and given the impasse that the negotiations were in, an official conciliator was called in.
When the Walloon regional government set its budget on 26 October, precise figures for pay increases could finally be put forward. Even though the official conciliator also intervened at this point, the trigger to end hostilities was the fact that the sums available were placed on the negotiating table, as follows:
A total of BEF 590 million was made available for extra pay increases.
However, the drivers at the Charleroi and Liege depots considered these proposals insufficient and rejected them. The regional government then proposed bringing certain pay increases forward by one year, on condition that these proposals were put to a secret ballot. Through this plan, the government was seen as deliberately refusing to take the representative nature of the trade union organisations into account, by making the issue a matter of individual voting. CGSP/ACOD was angry at this tactic. The referendum did not take place, however, as after general meetings of employees, the TEC bus drivers ended the 33-day strike and went back to work.
The finalisation of the negotiations resulted in the conclusion of a collective agreement for 2001-2, including various pay improvements and an industrial peace clause on remuneration issues. This agreement would normally have been negotiated in February 2001, after the conclusion of the new two-year national intersectoral agreement (BE0011330N). The dispute anticipated the conclusion of this agreement, creating an unusual situation for Belgium whereby a sectoral agreement has not followed on from an intersectoral agreement.
The strike was started at the grassroots level by the workers. The first demands and tactics were set by the workers themselves. They were relayed by the trade union organisations only later on. With hindsight, it can be said that the strategy adopted by this spontaneous action to apply pressure was perhaps not the best, in terms of:
The TEC workers have considerable power, as they can paralyse the transport network. Given the large scale that the dispute took on, certain commentators in the press asked whether the strikers were not abusing their right to strike by refusing to provide a public service for more than a month. This issue was made starker by the fact that the sector's social partners had not defined the concept of a minimum level of service to be preserved in the event of a strike.
More relevant questions may be: how could such a reaction have arisen among the workers? and what action or what lack of action led to this dispute, which aroused such strong emotions?
Rarely did commentators ask the question of whether the forceful tactics adopted by the workers were in response to various failings on the part of the other parties, or in response to more structural problems in the company, such as work organisation or the safety of the workers.
The TEC management also has its share of responsibility here. The damage could have been limited if it had decided to negotiate from the start of the dispute. In a collective dispute, management normally brings in a level of "economic rationality", and also recognises a need to keep the situation under control and to preserve its corporate image and local reputation. Was the SRWT really concerned about this? Arguably, it rather seemed that it did not show any interest at any time in the strikers' demands, or in favouring social dialogue in order to end the dispute. Moreover, by "denigrating" the unions, management only reinforced union anger, leading them to denounce the "cold calculation" of the employer towards the demands of the workers even more loudly.
The union organisations, in particular CGSP/ACOD (the largest), did not have an easy task. They were caught in a vice between a management that was denying them their role and a grassroots base that was making greater demands than themselves. The union representatives devoted several weeks to re-establishing dialogue with members and they had to revise their demands upwards. Management and the public authorities attempted to bypass the workers' representative bodies on several occasions by canvassing the opinion of the workers directly by vote or by referendum, thereby denying industrial democracy. However, in a sector where more than nine workers out of 10 are union members, not to recognise the procedures for worker representation can only lead to an escalation of the tactics of force.
As for the Walloon government, even though it played a relatively discreet role, it gradually took the place of the employer in the negotiations, while the SRWT was relegated to the sidelines. All it had to do was to go along with the proposals of the government. In this dispute, the SRWT seemed to lose its legitimacy while the Walloon government established itself.
Finally, the "victims" of the dispute, the users of public transport, were little heard during the strike and were patient. As meagre compensation, season ticket holders could get a refund.
In conclusion, in addition to the improvements granted to the workers, this dispute will lead to a number changes in the balance of power between the actors concerned - a reaffirmation of the power of the unions and a loss of legitimacy of the employer, the SRWT, in the favour of the Walloon government. (Catherine Delbar, Institut des Sciences du Travail)