Since consensus was reached on the intersectoral agreement in February 2007, the sectoral bargaining rounds have been underway in Belgium. Among the main features of these 2007–2008 sectoral agreements are moderate wage increases and innovations in lifelong learning, along with additional social security benefits and the broadening of the bargaining agenda with corporate social responsibility issues.
Background
On 2 February 2007, the central social partner organisations in the private sector signed the intersectoral collective agreement for the period 2007–2008 (BE0701019I). Every two years, this agreement provides a general framework for the subsequent sectoral bargaining rounds in Belgium. Nine months later, a round-up can be made of these sectoral negotiations, which take place in official joint committees (paritair comité/commission paritaire). Although bargaining was sometimes difficult, particularly in the services sector (BE0710039I), most of the private sectors managed to reach a two-year national agreement. Significant exceptions are the electricity sector and the nonferrous metal industry. Overall, a high coverage rate of over 90% in sectoral collective agreements remains the norm in Belgium’s private economy. The main elements of these new sectoral agreements are outlined here.
Wage norm respected
In almost all sectors, the conventionally agreed wage increases remained within the limit of 5%, as prescribed by the intersectoral national agreement. Small deviations from this norm could be detected in the following sectors: quarries (5.5%), metal (5.05%) and petroleum (7.01%). Wage increases will be spread out over time and either paid as a percentage (ranging from 0.55% to 0.70% or 1.6%) or as an absolute number (ranging from €0.05 to €0.20 or €0.65 for hourly wages; or varying between €8 and €25 for monthly wages). A number of sectors, including the steel and food sectors, reserved a ‘wage envelope’ that has to be bargained at company level.
Once again, the intersectoral agreement invited the sectors’ negotiators to also integrate a ‘correction mechanism’ into their two-year agreement, if still lacking in the sectoral agreement. If, as a result of the agreed pay increases and following automatic indexation, the actual pay increase is higher than the agreed pay rise, a bargaining procedure for correction must be provided. Contrary to expectations, not many of the new sectors adopted such an ‘all-in agreement’. This all-in mechanism, as a result, continues to be mainly used by the industrial sectors, such as metal, textiles and construction.
Reducing the wage handicap
Nevertheless, the intermediate report on wage developments for the period 2007–2008 by the Central Economic Council (Conseil Central de l’Economie/Centrale Raad voor het Bedrijfsleven, CCE/CRB) is rather optimistic about the moderate content of the agreed wage increases.
Each year, the CCE/CRB measures the evolution of labour costs, as well as all of the other factors that determine the competitive position of the Belgian economy. The report (in French, 926Kb PDF) of November 2007 is a so-called intermediate report; the 2008 report will be the starting point for the next wage bargaining round. The 2007 report has calculated that the wage difference – also referred to as the ‘wage handicap’ by the neighbouring countries France, Germany and the Netherlands – should drop to 1.1% in 2007 and even continue to diminish to a mere 0.4% in the course of 2008.
The trade unions believe this may be the end of the much-debated wage handicap in Belgian industry; however, the employers think otherwise, as is evident from a recent press release (in Dutch, 37Kb PDF) on the issue. They believe that the country is still holding onto serious arrears, dating back to pre-1996, which have not been taken into account. Moreover, the employer federations point to the uncertain evolution of inflation and wages in the coming months. According to Belgian employers, it is highly unlikely that the wage gap with Belgium’s neighbouring countries will drop to 0.4%. Instead, they believe that it is more likely to rise to 1.5%.
Additional benefits
The modest wage increases agreed have been complemented by improvements in other wage settlements in the various sectors: these provisions include an end-of-year premium, holiday pay and profit-sharing schemes, such as the ‘return on capital employed’ (ROCE) premium. Additional social benefits financed through sector-specific funds have also been increased in different sectors, as well as the contributions to the sector-specific pension funds – the so-called second pillar of the Belgian pension system.
An interesting development in this regard concerns the agreement in the temporary agency work sector, which in addition to the public sector (BE0611089I) is another economic sector that provides for a pension system for contractual workers. Accordingly, temporary agency workers will be granted a premium comparable to the contribution paid for permanent workers to their additional pension insurance.
Improved working conditions
The intersectoral agreement also put forward some suggestions aimed at improving working conditions. The idea to acknowledge the accumulated seniority of a temporary worker when offered an open-ended contract was welcomed by subsectors, for example, of the metal industry and distribution services. Many sectors extended the right to full-time or part-time career leave within the time credit system (tijdskrediet).
Other sectors made initial efforts to improve working conditions through a new agreement providing for a working group aimed at preventing alcohol and drug abuse or at tackling stress.
Tackling gender and age discrimination in wage settlements
Working groups whose remit is to investigate how wage discrimination based on age can be eliminated have been established in various subsectors of the metal, services and finance sectors – in addition to subsectors in textiles, glassworks, food, construction, agriculture and business services. These working groups have to reach their final conclusions before the end of 2008. The agreement for the banking sector already provided for a reorganisation of the age-dependent wage classification scheme on the basis of an experience-based scheme.
Corporate social responsibility
Various sectors – metal, textiles, construction and food – have paid heed to environmental issues in their agreements, such as in relation to energy efficiency measures. A topic of particular interest concerns the development and support of measures aimed at encouraging people to leave their car at home when commuting to and from work. Other sectoral agreements included a clause recognising the ‘clean clothes at work’ campaign (schone kleren op het werk), for instance in the petroleum industry, or development aid in the food sector for example.
Trade union recognition
A pending issue in Belgian social dialogue is the implementation of the EU information and consultation directive (Directive 2002/14/EC), particularly within small enterprises. In this bargaining round, some new, additional breakthroughs have been realised at sectoral level. Employee thresholds required for trade union representation have been lowered in a number of sectors. In the hairdressing industry, it is now possible for a trade union delegation to be established in companies with at least 20 employees; in laundry services, the new threshold is 40 employees, while in transport, this threshold has been changed to 30 employees.
Training and lifelong learning
In addition to increased training efforts for groups at risk and promises to increase the rate of participation in training, four interesting training and lifelong learning initiatives have emerged in the 2007–2008 sectoral agreements.
- An individual right to training has been introduced within subsectors of the metal, distribution and finance sectors, as well as the glassworks sector, subsectors of the food industry and the merchant marine sector. The joint committee of the insurance sector plans to establish a joint observatory to list the training needs of different job functions; the workers will be entitled to at least two days’ training.
- Various sectors have explicitly formalised in their agreement the stipulation that trade union representatives have to be involved on the shop floor in the preparation of company training plans. This development has occurred in subsectors of the metal, textiles, construction and chemistry sectors.
- In the metal industry, the concept of a ‘training curriculum’ has been introduced. The company will keep a training curriculum vitae (CV) for each worker, which will provide an inventory of the functions exercised by the worker and an overview of the worker’s training career in the company – including informal training, on-the-job learning and task enhancement. The inventory has to be validated in a joint document drawn up by the employer and employee.
- A specific sectoral pact has been negotiated for the training of temporary agency workers. The signatory organisations have committed to strive for closer cooperation between the training funds of the sector in which the agency worker is employed, and between initiatives taken by the temporary agency itself. The sectoral training fund of the agency sector has to play a coordinating role in this regard. The entire agreement is based on the principle that the burden of training efforts for the agency workers should be split between the agency sector and the service users.
Guy Van Gyes, Higher Institute for Labour Studies (HIVA), Catholic University of Leuven