The 4-day workweek, the right to disconnect, platform workers regulation etc.: Belgium at the forefront of EU labour market reforms?

The labour deal comprises a series of measures purportedly increasing flexibility in the labour market and easing the fluidity of a strained labour market. The move has attracted the attention of the international press with post-modern measures such as the four-day workweek and the right to disconnect.

1.

The main novelty of the full-time, four-day workweek (of 9.5 hours max per day) is the process to achieve it, not the concept (which has existed for about 40 years). Going forward, employees can individually submit a request for a four-day workweek with their employer, who is required to justify its decision in case of refusal. If daily working time will be 10 hours, a collective agreement is still needed. The alternating workweek designed to accommodate single parents is another example of an existing flexibility feature that is now being updated (and extended?) to add flexibility to the benefit of the workforce. Evening work (between 8pm and midnight) becomes possible with the signature of a single trade union to a collective agreement. With this measure, the government hopes to recover some foreign investment in the booming e-commerce and logistics business. Conversion of part of the severance package into redeployment measures (outplacement, training, etc.) is already possible but will be given a new format. Finally, a transition mechanism allowing certain redundant employees to start work at a successor employer during their notice period (with termination cost shifted to the successor) is designed to facilitate job mobility, as an alternative to a counter-notice that has existed for over 40 years. All the above measures were presented as innovative actions to promote accessibility and mobility in the labour market.

2.

In addition, individual employees will henceforth have the right to up to 5 days of vocational training per year at the employer’s expense. It is unclear how this individual right is exercised, as novel training is not really spelled out in terms of days, and how it is seen to align with the collective training rights which have been in place for a long time.

Other measures are intended to facilitate work-life balance, such as the right to disconnect. This right to disconnect was recently introduced for civil servants in Belgium. For the private sector, it still requires further implementation by way of company collective agreement. One may expect such agreements to exclude all employees exempt from working time regulations.

3.

Finally, the Belgian government is one of the first to take regulatory action regarding platform workers. Inspired by the recent EU Commission proposals, and contrary to neighbouring countries which have opted for a specific social status for platform workers, it now introduces a rebuttable presumption through eight criteria of financial-economic nature (and not of legal dependency). Meeting at least three of these criteria will generate a presumption of an employment relationship with all ensuing consequences.

4.

In the absence of a draft bill at this time, it is hard to provide a full critical analysis of the labour deal and its effects on business, but a few comments may be appropriate.

Most commentators are very sceptical about the potential of the labour deal for achieving the announced objective, both in terms of its contents and its personal scope. Indeed, rather than being (the start of) a major plan for modernizing labour laws and reforming the labour market to attain the magic 80% employability rate, the labour deal is more of a basket of very tiny updates to measures that often already exist.

Most of the measures enhance flexibility on the employees’ part (four-day workweek, alternating schedules, transitioning mechanism) or make employees’ life more comfortable (training, right to disconnect), but business is certainly burdened with additional cost and red tape. For business, in a kind of “déjà vu” atmosphere, older and former flexibility enhancing measures are simply picked up again in an employee-friendly wrapping.

Finally, in terms of personal scope, over 80% of Belgian companies occupy fewer than 10 employees. Many measures of the labour deal only apply to companies with a minimum workforce threshold of 20 employees (or companies with a trade union delegation, so often over 50 employees), and other measures allow for a motivated refusal by management (4-day workweek, alternating workweek schedule), which is clearly easier in small companies. So, one can question the overall effects of the labour deal on the labour market.