WHITE-COLLAR WORKER
| BELGIUM |
| BEDIENDE EMPLOYÉ WHITE-COLLAR WORKER |
An employee who enters into a contract to perform, in return for pay or wages and under an employer's direction and control, work that requires predominantly mental rather than physical effort.
The distinction made between blue-collar and white-collar workers is sometimes called the summa divisio of Belgian labour law. This distinction is not only the criterion in individual labour law for a number of differences in the reciprocal rights and obligations of the employer and the employee, such as periods of notice; it is also reflected in collective industrial relations and the structures within the system: in the majority of cases, there are separate Joint Committees for blue-collar and white-collar workers employed within the same industry, and separate election lists for the works council and workplace health and safety committee . Even the trade union structure itself is based on this distinction: blue-collar and white-collar workers have their own separate unions. The distinction also exists in the organization of the labour courts, and so on. In 1991 the total number of white-collar workers in Belgium (private sector plus public sector and education) was 1,859,697, as compared with 1,282,840 blue-collar workers. Strong social criticism is nowadays levelled at the distinction, which is held to be out of date, inappropriate and discriminatory. Its abolition does not seem feasible in practice, since employers are firmly opposed to the idea of raising the status of blue-collar workers to that of white-collar workers and the latter, for their part, refuse to relinquish their rather lengthy periods of notice. Cases of disputed classification between blue-collar and white-collar are referred to the labour courts, through which the distinction is now being challenged as incompatible with the principle of equality before the law enshrined in the Constitution.
The white-collar category also covers "kaderleden/cadres" (professional and managerial staff) and senior executives, where similar classification problems arise and are ultimately settled by the labour courts. See blue-collar worker , professional and managerial staff , senior executives .
Please note: the European industrial relations glossaries were compiled between 1991 and 2003 and are not updated. For current material see the European industrial relations dictionary.