Place of work and working conditions – Belgium
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This report gives insights into the quality of work of people, working most of the time at places other than the company’s premises. What is the ‘effect’ of this other place of work on working conditions? This question is for Belgium surveyed by focusing on 4 types of occupation: teleworkers, construction workers, home carers and temporary agency workers. Although place of work is no important issue of policy debate in Belgian, some important, specific problems can be detected: higher safety risk in construction, labour conditions of (foreign) temporary agency workers, isolation and higher risk of client aggression, commuting problems and longer, irregular working hours.
1. Incidence of working away from the place of work
No detailed statistics exist on this matter. The reasons seem to be as follows. First of all, the matter itself (place of work) is not discussed in relation to working conditions in a general way. Secondly, Belgium has no national survey on working conditions, but even regional (the Flemish Workability Monitor), thematic or sector specific surveys do not contain any questions related to this matter integrated in the questionnaire. However, it does not mean that in an indirect way the matter is dealt with in working conditions policies. Belgium has a Homework Act. Social partners concluded in 2005 a national collective agreement on telework (CCT n° 85). The problem of aggression by clients is for example a hot policy issue for the moment, because some recent labour conflicts related to assaults of bus drivers. However, this case can be seen as exemplary. Although the violence problem is connected to the bus driver doing isolated his work not at the company premises, the question is not at all placed in a general discussion on place of work and quality of working life.
Nevertheless, as an unintended use of a new type of administrative data, collected by the Federal government, we can make a rough estimate of the people not working at the company workplace in a general way. As part of its mobility and environmental policy the Federal government asks companies with more than 100 employees to make every three year a diagnosis of its commuter traffic. The diagnosis is based on a standard questionnaire, which has to be completed and send to the Federal Administration of Mobility and Transport. The first wave of this diagnosis took place in 2005. One of the introduction questions asks the employer to indicate how many people work in their company more than half of their annual working time. The employer has to give commuting data and to answer other questions for this group of workers. When we deduct these figures from the total amount of workers, we get a rough estimate of the people working most of the time not at the premises of their company. The data are on establishment level and include only companies with more than 100 employees. The data have probably other reliability problems: how have the companies counted the people that work normally at their premises; what with people on a long sick leave? Nevertheless, data especially provided by the responsible Federal administration tell us that around 83% of the Belgian employees work most of the time at the establishment’s workplace.
Sectors with a high percentage of people not working at the company premises are most of the time related to the construction industry. Other important sectors seem to be business services (accountancy and auditing) and the paramedical sector. A typical sector with everybody working at the company premises is the retail trade.
In the following sections, we will as a result of this general lack of attention to the matter, summarise recent research findings on the working conditions of certain sectors/occupations, where we intuitively can assume that most of the workers do not work at the premises of the company, but somewhere else. We will focus most of the time on construction workers, home care workers, teleworkers and temporary agency workers.
Home care: around 230 Belgian organisations are active in this subsidised sector, which employs more than 20,000 home care workers. As these workers provide their clients with a set of basic home services, they almost never are present at the premises of their employer. The clients are most of the time sick people or elderly. The basic services provided are most of the time cleaning and other household work.
Temp workers: around 350,000 workers some 100,000 student workers.
Construction: 145,000 blue-collar workers of which a large proportion works at building sites (exact figure not available).
Teleworkers: 10% of the Belgian workers are involved in telework.
2. Health and safety
Transport/Commuting
This transport issue is particularly significant for construction workers. Construction work is characterised by travelling a distance: workers easily have to travel 20 to 70 kilometres to a building site. In the densely populated Belgium, where most people live very nearby their workplace, this is exceptional. These workers are in other words also strongly affected by the rising traffic congestion on the Belgian roads. An important time of their working time is now travelling time. They also start to work very early to avoid traffic jams. As a result, construction workers are longer periods from home than the average employee in Belgium. This situation has negative effects: higher fatigue and stress, more difficulties to combine work with family life and with social activities.
As compensation for these longer working hours as a result of travelling time, construction workers have the right to being paid a mobility premium. This premium is calculated as a compensation for each kilometre of travelling to the building site. The calculation of the kilometres is based on a birds-eye view of the distance with a correction for the real travel distance.
Risks
The construction sector and (young) temporary agency workers are defined as the sector and the occupational group with the highest safety risks in Belgium. Both categories are ranking on top in statistics of accidents at work. For both, specific national organisations are active to enhance safety at work and to combat the accident rate (see for the construction industry: www.cnac.be; for the temporary agency sector: www.p-i.be).
In regard to health and safety the following problems of home care workers can be mentioned:
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Everybody has already been confronted with ‘difficult clients’ and 38% have already been sexually harassed.
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The working environment is not always optimal. 21% work very often in non-comfortable houses, 14% in unhygienic houses and 10% in an unsafe working environment.
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Physical pressure is high, back complaints are a common feature of the health situation of these home care workers.
Risks are not defined as higher for people working at home. .An indication for this situation is that the insurance companies do not ask a higher premium to insure a teleworker for accidents at work. However, no detailed statistics exist on the incidence of work-related accidents of teleworkers.
Recently a lot of policy and media attention has been devoted to aggression and violence on public transport (and previously in taxis). Some labour conflicts developed related to this matter. Bus drivers went on strike. Campaigns have been set up to tackle this question. The unions reached for example an elaborated agreement with the Flemish local transport company De Lijn to increase the security measures on the busses, especially in urban regions (placement of camera surveillance, stewards travelling with the bus in the evening, etc.).
Health outcomes
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place of work is no variable in these type of analyses, it is difficult to reach conclusion on health outcomes, see anyhow the next section on psycho-social risks.
Prevention
The Act concerning the well-being at work (4 August 1996) applies to all employers and employees. Specific additional regulations exist for example for teleworkers and construction workers.
Teleworkers
In general it is considered difficult to follow the same rules as in a company shopfloor regarding the organisation and furnishing of the home workplace, for example the rules on fire emergency exits. Labour law specialists define a healthy and safe working environment for somebody who works at home as a shared responsibility. This responsibility is best stipulated by a number of arrangements concerning safety and welfare in the homeworker’s employment contract
The Labour Inspectorate monitors the observance of this Act. However, the Act of 16 November 1972 determines that these inspectors need the inhabitant’s or magistrate’s written permission in order to inspect the teleworker’s workplace. The companies’ own prevention counsellors also need the written permission of the teleworker. In other words, the health and safety control is balanced with the privacy rights of the home worker.
Construction workers
A new development in the prevention of accidents at work in the construction sector, has been the installation of a safety coordinator at building sites (Royal decree of 2001, changed in 2005).
When two or more building contractors are working together at a construction site, a safety coordinator has to be appointed. The scale of the building site (more or less than 500 square meters) defines the detailed functioning of this safety coordinator.
The safety coordinator organises the measures to prevent accidents at work. Starting at the moment, when the first plans and designs are made by the architect, the coordinator has to be involved in developing health and safety measures for the future building site. He has an advisory role in the development of the health and safety plan of the building site, keeps a health and safety diary, when the building works are executed and drafts an ex post evaluation of the safety situation, when the works are ended.
3. Work organisation
Construction workers
Figure 1: Psycho-social risks in the construction industry, Flemish Workability Monitor 2005 (% of employees)
Source Flemish workability monitor (BE060601SD)
Specific analysis of the Flemish Workability Monitor learns that work pressure, physical working conditions and lack of autonomy are the most important psycho-social risk factors for blue-collar workers in the construction industry (Roelandt, 2006).
Home care workers
Specific research on the quality of work learns that home care workers are facing increased working pressures (Ver heyen & Vandenbrande, 2005). Nevertheless, survey results show that home care workers experience a lot of autonomy and task variation in their job. Although most of them are satisfied with the social support from the direct supervisor and colleagues, an important group wants to have more contact with their supervisor (38%) and with their colleagues (64%). 53% of the home care workers do not have a weekly contact with their direct supervisor. This group of workers questioned especially strongly the lack of social support and context with other caretakers (for example the doctor).
Teleworkers
A web-based survey of attitudes toward telework learns that the following advantages and disadvantages are seen as the most important (Walrave, 2005).
Advantages (% agree with the statement):
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A solution to reduce the home-to-work commuting (97.8%)
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Opportunity to enhance the combination of one’s private and professional life (90.1%)
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Greater autonomy of teleworkers in the execution of their daily work (89.6%)
Disadvantages:
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Loss of social contact with colleagues (69.4%)
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Division between private and professional life will fade (36.3%)
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Decreased involvement in corporate activities (35.8%).
Regarding these attitudes, teleworkers are most of the time more positive and less negative than non-teleworkers with one exception. The blurring between professional and private life is much more a concern for teleworkers than for non-teleworkers in this attitude survey.
The Belgian national collective agreement CCT n°85 from 9 November 2005, foresees in its Article 6 that the individual agreement, to be concluded before starting to telework, must contain in writing the following important information on how the work is organised:
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The frequency of telework and possibly the days at which telework is done and if needed the days and/or hours where the worker is present in the enterprise
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The periods of time during which the teleworker can be contacted and by which means
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When the teleworker can ask for technical support
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The way in which the employer covers the costs linked to the equipment and breakdowns
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The conditions on which a teleworker can return to working at the employer premises, the notice period and/or the duration of the telework and its renewal modalities.
It also stipulated that in case there is no written agreement on these points, the teleworker has the right to work at the employer’s premises. Furthermore, the social partners decided that the employer should bear the entire responsibility of the provision, installation and maintenance of the equipment. In Belgium, the national collective agreement from November 2005 also regulated the respective responsibilities of the employer and the teleworker in the case of an equipment breakdown. In its article 13, it stipulates that in the case of such a breakdown, the teleworker must inform the employer immediately and that the teleworker is paid during that period. Specific arrangements can be foreseen such as the replacement of the equipment or a temporary assignment at the employer’s premises.
Temporary agency workers
A survey of 2001 learns that the quality of work of temporary agency workers has some significant differences with workers with a permanent contract (Vander Steene et al., 2002). Controlling for gender, age and occupation, they have a lower degree of autonomy at work, less responsibilities, underutilisation of skills, lower time pressure,
The survey established no significant differences related to physical working conditions, task variation, and social support of colleagues. Temp workers indicated a higher support of their direct supervisor than people with a permanent contract.
4. Working time and work/life balance
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workers
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start of the working day and long working hours due to travel distance of commuting are seen as important negative characteristics of a (blue-collar) occupation in the construction industry
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care workers
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workers consider working time flexibility and the possibility to regulate their own hours of work as an important job asset.
Temporary agency workers
Temp workers work less part-time than other workers and perform less overtime. However, they are more involved in a-typical working time regimes like night work or shift work. They work more than others in a team, but are less involved in functional flexibility (for example job rotation).
Telework
Vendramin & Taskin (2004) show that teleworking addresses challenges that are similar to those addressed by part-time working: the constrained or voluntary character, the schedule management and the availability, the socialisation in the company and in the collective, the great diversity of situations (from a constrained third time to a voluntary four fifth). Considered first as an exclusively technological innovation, telework constitutes nowadays a component of a flexible way to manage work. Telework is mostly practised in companies and with employees that are involved in new forms of work organisation. These organisational forms are styles where flexibility and autonomy are very important. One is part of a broader development of project work, whereby the employer decides on the deadlines and the output to deliver and whereby the employee has related to this higher work pressure the facility to organise his tasks and working time more autonomously.
5. Other issues
As already stated no specific policy debate is related in Belgium to the concept ‘place of work’. Nevertheless, the rising activities of foreign companies and workers in sectors like the construction industry, transport and temporary agency work could be regarded as a new issue in this field (see forthcoming EWCO comparative study in this regard).
6. Views of the national centre
The issue is not a focus for debate and as a result no concrete figures exist on the incidence. Main developments in this area can in other words only be detected in an indirect way.
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The safety problems in the construction industry due to the increasing subcontracting and outsourcing of activities at building sites;
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Labour conditions of (foreign) temporary agency workers;
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Violence at work (for example bus drivers confronted with aggression by passengers)
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Commuting problems related to the general traffic problems in Belgium (more and more problematic traffic jams and congestion).
References
Construction workers
Roelandt P. (2006), Werkdruk in de bouw, STV Innovatie en Arbeid, Informatiedossier.
Home care workers
Ver heyen W. & Vandenbrande T. (2005), Werken in de gezinszorg: kwaliteit van de arbeid van de verzorgden. HIVA-K.U.Leuven.
Temporary agency workers
Telework
Project telework@home or close at home
Taskin L. & Vendramin P. (2004), Le télétravail, Une vague silencieuse. Enjeux socio-économiques d’une nouvelle flexibilité. Louvain-la-Neuve :PUL, coll. e-Management.
Guy van Gyes, HIVA