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This article gives a brief overview of collective bargaining on changes in work organisation in Belgium, as of September 2004. It looks at: the extent to which collective agreements introduce changes in work organisation that take into account productivity demands, flexibility and security in an integrated way; the main areas in which changes are being introduced; the overall success or otherwise of bargaining on the topic; and the prospects for the future.
The EU’s European employment strategy was revised in 2003 (EU0308205F), following demands for a more results-oriented strategy contributing successfully to the targets for more and better jobs and an inclusive labour market set at the Lisbon European Council in 2000 (EU0004241F). To support the three objectives of full employment, quality and productivity at work and cohesion and an inclusive labour market, the current employment guidelines identify 10 priorities ('commandments'), including one on 'promoting adaptability of workers and firms to change'. This identifies work organisation (alongside skills, lifelong learning and career development, gender equality, health and safety at work, flexibility and security, inclusion and access to the labour market, work-life balance, social dialogue and worker involvement, diversity and non-discrimination, and overall work performance) as an element in improved quality at work, which should be pursued through a concerted effort between all actors and particularly through social dialogue.
The 2004 Council Recommendation on the implementation of Member States’ employment policies provides for four priorities:
- increasing adaptability of workers and enterprises;
- attracting more people to enter and remain on the labour market, making work a real option for all;
- investing more and more effectively in human capital and lifelong learning; and
- ensuring effective implementation of reforms through better governance.
The Recommendation refers to promoting flexibility combined with security in the labour market, by modernising and broadening the concept of job security, maximising job creation and raising productivity. As defined in the employment guidelines, 'job security' refers not only to employment protection but also to building people’s ability to remain and progress in work. Changes in work organisation thus appear to be seen as a main vehicle for increasing the adaptability of workers and enterprises. Related to this issue is flexibility and security in the labour market and the relative attractiveness of 'standard' and 'non-standard' employment relationships (with the aim of avoiding a 'two-tier' labour market).
With work organisation playing an increasingly important role in European employment policy, in September 2004 the EIRO national centres were asked, in response to a questionnaire, to give a brief overview of the industrial relations aspects of the topic, looking at: the extent to which collective agreements introduce changes in work organisation that take into account productivity demands and flexibility and security at the workplace in an integrated way; the main areas in which changes are being introduced; the overall success or otherwise of bargaining on the topic; and the prospects for the future. The Belgian responses are set out below (along with the questions asked).
Recent agreements on changes in work organisation
Please provide information on recent developments (over the last three-five years) in collective agreements on work organisation that introduce changes in flexibility, security and productivity in an integrated way. The kind of issues that such agreements might cover include: introducing autonomous (or semi-autonomous work) teams; reducing the number of hierarchical layers; new forms of employee involvement; reorganising work functions; moving away from product-based structures to business unit; flexible working hours; multiskilling; job rotation; improving training (eg making it more systematic, ensuring wider participation, or changing the focus); new pay systems (eg performance-based pay, profit-sharing, share ownership schemes), and new financial and non-financial performance measures; or new appraisal systems.
The kind of agreements that we are interested in here are those that deal with a number of the issues listed above as an overall 'package'. Please provide any overall information available on this kind of development, if possible, and brief details of three or four agreements (at company and/or sectoral level) that you consider particularly innovative and interesting.
There are difficulties in collecting information on collective agreements that have a bearing on the organisation of work. Most subjects pertaining to the changes in work organisation are not covered by specific legislation, except in the area of working time organisation, and there are thus few agreements dealing with them. Any exceptions are usually informal company agreements, which are not subject to any legal obligation and do not have the force of law. These are not documented in an detailed manner, nor are they verified, and are therefore difficult to analyse.
Agreements on the organisation of working time often refer to legisation such as the law of 16 March 1971 regarding working arrangements, which touches on matters including working and rest hours, or the law of 17 March 1987, which deals with the introduction of new 'working regimes' in companies. Such agreements are often sectoral, with their detailed application a matter for company-level negotiations. Agreements on new work regimes, which include the theme of flexibility, were initially concluded at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, and constitute the last 'revolution' in this area. During the last five years, there has been more a process of progressive evolution, particularly through amendments to earlier agreements.
In this context, below we examine (based on interviews with a number of social partner representatives) a number of relevant industry-wide collective agreements concluded in the chemicals, steel, food, hotel and construction sectors, and in the National Auxiliary Joint Committee for White-Collar Workers (Commission Paritaire Nationale Auxiliaire pour les Employés/Aanvullend Nationaal Paritair Comité voor Bedienden, CPNAE/ANPCB) (which covers white-collar workers who are not covered by specific sectoral agreements - BE0106352N). In general terms, Belgium's two-yearly national intersectoral agreement (BE0302302F) is given effect by such sectoral collective agreements (also usually signed for a duration of two years) and the sector is the key bargaining level, though sectoral agreements are sometimes 'completed' at company level if they stipulate this possibility. The manner in which bargaining and dialogue is conducted may vary considerably from one sector to another, depending on the industry's particular characteristics (eg the size of companies) or the relative strength of the social partners.
What are the main aims of bargaining on work organisation - eg increasing productivity? Increasing personnel flexibility? Improving the company’s position in the market? Avoiding redundancies and lay-offs?
What are the main areas in which changes are being introduced - eg new organisational structures, new more flexible and less hierarchical methods, new corporate cultures, new business practices, more training, new performance measurement techniques, new reward systems?
In the context of the introduction of work organisation changes, what kind of contractual and working time arrangements are provided - ie how is the flexibility and security issue being addressed?
In the context of work organisation changes introduced with a view to improving productivity, what specific measures have been agreed?
What are the motives of the parties in concluding such agreements - please indicate the motives of each side (management and workforce), such as reducing costs, promoting flexibility, securing employment, preventing compulsory redundancy, or improving terms and conditions.
According to trade union representatives, the employers’ interests in most negotiations on work organisation are economic: on the one hand, an increase in productivity and minimisation of wage costs; and, on the other hand, and improved competitive position for the company, particularly by adapting to the market and customers' requirements. Agreements referring to flexibility may result from these interests. The role of the workers’ representatives is essentially to protect employees by, for example, negotiating measures that improve the competitiveness of the company in order to ensure its continued existence, whilst guaranteeing a favourable level of employment and employee purchasing power, and 'socially acceptable' employment conditions.
It would seem that vocational training is one field that has seen considerable activity within the sectors considered. In the steel industry, for example, the sectoral agreements for 2001-2 and 2003-4 state that 'companies are pursuing and consolidating their internal training initiatives in order to improve the qualification of workers in line with technological developments', and the 2003-4 agreement (BE0302302F) adds: 'the companies draw up training plans, at company level, which are reviewed and explained in detail at a works council meeting. When setting up the vocational training plans, the companies take great care not exclude any category of workers.' Other sectors, such as food and hotels, are also seeing a considerable increase in provisions on vocational training. This is especially intended to give poorly qualified workers the possibility of acquiring skills that will be useful for their whole career, rather than being limited to one particular company.
The training section of the sectoral agreement concluded within the CPNAE/ANPCB in May 2003 (in application of the 2003-4 intersectoral agreement) is a good example of specific agreed measures in this area. In the interest of improving the quality of vocational training for the whole workforce, it has been agreed that each employee will be given four days of training between 1 January 2004 and 31 December 2005, as well as the complementary right, during the same period, to the equivalent of one day of training outside of working hours (in the evenings or at weekends).
In the chemicals sector, apart from vocational training, bargaining has covered other relevant themes, such as: a new, somewhat less hierarchical structure; investment in new technologies; systems for verifying working hours and compensation; internal reorganisation; more active and demanding management of human resources; involving workers in company competitiveness initiatives; and 'top-down' communication within the company. The question of personnel flexibility has been raised at the same time in some enterprises, aimed at guaranteeing a certain operational stability and/or production flows, in spite of its high cost. In other sectors, such as hotels or construction, this is seen as a critical issue and, over the last few years, has appeared regularly in collective bargaining.
In the construction sector, flexibility is applied through the annualisation of working hours, calculated over a year running from 1 April to 3 March (a sectoral alternative to the scheme laid down in the law of 16 March 1971). This system enables working hours to be concentrated into certain periods of the year.
In the chemicals sector, one of the measures agreed in order to improve productivity is an attempt to introduce more personalised remuneration or profit-sharing. However, this has reportedly not been a great success with the workers, nor has it generated many lower-level collective agreements.
Assessment
What have been the results of collective agreements introducing work organisation changes? Drawing on assessments/evaluations made by researchers or the parties to agreements (employers, trade unions, works councils etc) or other sources, please provide information on issues such as the following:
- whether agreements have been successes or failures, and the reasons why in both cases;
- the impacts on flexibility and security (eg are there any successful examples of collective agreements addressing this issue as part of work organisation changes?);
- the impacts on productivity (has productivity been improved as a result of the work organisation changes introduced?); and
- the impacts on collective bargaining - are such deals broadly considered as concession bargaining, or as 'zero-sum' or 'positive-sum' situations? What are the implications for the structure, process or nature of collective bargaining (eg company versus sectoral? workplace representatives versus trade union? from “distributive” to “integrative” bargaining [with mutual gains for both sides]) and the role of management?
Where significant differences of interpretation exist in assessments on these questions - notably between the social partners - please report on the differing views.
Because the field is so wide, it is difficult to approach the results of collective agreements, which often have mixed impacts, from a global perspective. Moreover, it would seem that there was no strong tendency, between 1999 and 2004, to revise negotiating content or the process.
Nevertheless, in the case of the training provisions of the sectoral agreement concluded within the CPNAE/ANPCB in May 2003 (see previous section), it would seem that in reality, these are essentially of benefit to workers who already have a high level of training (managers and higher professional categories). In practice, this training scheme can identify the target group with complete autonomy and, in certain cases, transfer the training credit totally or partially to certain individual employees. Where this is the case, 'at risk' groups are not sufficiently taken into account and the preventive objectives of vocational training, - ie to help workers adapt to new work organisation in order to be capable of facing changes in job functions and the required expertise - may be lost. On the other hand, it seems that companies are investing less and less, whether it be in time or in money, in training. So, the results may become apparent in rather temporary ways in certain companies.
The results of the abovementioned collective agreements in the chemicals sector would appear to be multiple and varied. All the industry's companies underwent restructuring between 1992 and 2002, with loss of jobs as a consequence. These restructuring exercises were accompanied by internal reorganisation, particularly involving: multiskilled job requirements; the phasing out of hierarchical layers of management; rationalisation of procedures through computer-controlled systems increased competence, stress and workload; and the development of individual or group competition among workers. In this context, it appears that these collective agreements were particularly concerned with:
- the development of 'competitive' bargaining, with the objective of obtaining high-quality agreements whilst ensuring that the competitive position of the company is maintained, as well as an increasing tendency for agreements to provide for one-off, non-structural benefits;
- providing a framework for an improved organisation of work;
- certain qualitative advances concerning the duration of contracts, working hours, a better work environment, safety, participation in training programmes, recognition and changes in status for certain workers;
- change in remuneration systems; and
- technological improvement.
In the food and hotel industries, some positive developments have occurred in terms of work organisation, especially since 1996. Flexibility has been more directed and regulated in the hotel industry and the impact of increased funds for the training of workers and small companies has been felt. The results of the collective agreement covering working time flexibility issues in the construction sector are reportedly mixed.
At company level, bargaining in the area of work organisation frequently addresses the general theme of flexibility, particularly in terms of time credits, career management and the reconciliation of work and private life. Many flexibility agreements would essentially appear to be the result of employers’ initiatives, with the suggested compensation being, for example, the safeguarding of employment, various bonuses or the reduction of working hours.
Another subject in the present discussion is vocational training. The sectoral social partners are seen as having a key role to play in seeking to meet an EU objective of improving the distribution of training in the direction of the most vulnerable groups. Moreover, since the current agreement on the issue was signed in May 2003, vocational training is the theme which is most discussed within the CPNAE/ANPCB sectoral joint committee. The content of the 2005-6 intersectoral agreement in this area will be a sign of future trends.
In terms of productivity, the working time theme is also approached - a discussion on longer hours is under way at present (BE0408301N) - and sometimes leads to discussions on tackling stress. The issue of job security is not dealt with much as such - according to certain union representatives, employers hesitate before committing themselves to this route - but it is touched on in the form of guarantees of employment in cases of company restructuring.
For some commentators, Belgian collective bargaining is going through a bad patch at the moment - in some cases, the fear of employers moving production to lower labour-cost countries generates non-egalitarian relationships. According to certain trade union representatives, the issues of flexibility, subcontracting and security of employment are often approached through threats of reorganisation, restructuring and/or relocating production to lower-cost countries.
Debate and prospects
What impact has the kind of agreement referred to above had in your country, and what impact might such agreements have in future? What is the current debate on the topic? Please provide an assessment of prospects for the future in terms of work organisation bargaining in your country (differentiating by sector, if relevant).
Research into changes in work organisation in Belgium is often difficult. This is partly because of the wide range of matters associated with the issue, and partly because of the large number of levels at which these matter can be negotiated (eg intersectoral, sectoral and enterprise). Moreover, most relevant agreements have been concluded at enterprise level and have not been systematically logged. This article has therefore highlighted two issues that are frequently addressed by the social partners in the sectors under discussion: vocational training and labour flexibility. Although there have not been any revolutionary changes, or major and global sectoral trends, in Belgium during the last five years, certain alterations have been made to earlier agreements.
When negotiations begin in late 2004 over a new intersectoral agreement for 2005-6, certain issues linked to work organisation will be addressed. The Federation of Belgian Enterprises (Fédération des Entreprises de Belgique/Verbond van Belgische Ondernemingen, FEB/VBO) will put forward its 'Strategy 2010', the aim of which is to guarantee prosperity and employment, while also dealing with population ageing, and in addition it will highlight matters such as greater flexibility, and longer working time through an extension of the total working career, and of longer working hours on a weekly, or even annual, basis. Given the divergent positions of the trade union representatives, negotiations are likely to be fraught. Any new intersectoral agreement would be implemented by bargaining at sector level in 2005. (Isabelle Vandenbussche, Institut des sciences du travail)