White-collar workers agreement raises early retirement issue

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In May 2001, trade unions and employers' associations on Belgium's National Auxiliary Joint Committee for White-Collar Workers (CPNAE/ANPCB), which covers some 310,000 employees, signed a new collective agreement for 2001-2. The most controversial aspect of the deal is that it makes a breach, albeit a relatively small one, in the current system of early retirement from the age of 58, to the satisfaction of employers.

The employers' associations and trade unions represented on the National Auxiliary Joint Committee for White-Collar Workers (Commission Paritaire Nationale Auxiliaire pour les Employés/Aanvullend Nationaal Paritair Comité voor Bedienden, CPNAE/ANPCB) concluded talks on a new two-year collective agreement for 2001-2 on 25 April 2001. However, it was not until mid-May that the text was approved by one of the trade union centres involved, the National Federation of White-Collar Workers (Centrale Nationale des Employés/Landelijke Bedienden Centrale, CNE/LBC) affiliated to the Confederation of Christian Trade Unions (Confédération des Syndicats Chrétiens/Algemeen Christelijk Vakverbond, CSC/ACV).

The CPNAE/ANPCB (joint committee No. 218) occupies a special place on the Belgian industrial relations scene (BE0008324F), as it covers and concludes collective agreements for white-collar workers who are not catered for within other sectors. It thus organises the industrial relations for 310,000 white-collar workers in a wide range of sectors - including information technology, research consultancies, retail and garages - which makes it Belgium's largest joint committee in terms of employed people covered. The CPNAE/ANPCB covers at least 50,000 enterprises, 96% of whose employees work in small and medium-sized companies with no trade union representation.

The new agreement signed in May follows on from the national intersectoral agreement for 2001-2 concluded in December 2000 (BE0101337F). The main point of controversy was the agreement's provisions on early retirement. The accord provides that, although early retirement remains possible at the age of 58 until 31 December 2002, employers will receive financial support from the sectoral social fund "only for employees taking early retirement whose notice periods commence after 1 January 2002, and providing that [the financial support] is offered as part of early retirement at 59". In other words, payment of that part of the supplementary benefit for employees taking early retirement which has hitherto been covered by the sectoral social fund has now been deferred from 58 to 59.

CNE/LBC has confirmed that its reluctance to sign the new agreement was directly linked to this provision relating to early retirement. For its part, the Federation of Belgian Enterprises (Fédération des Entreprises de Belgique/Verbond van Belgische Ondernemingen, FEB/VBO), which negotiates for employers on the CPNAE/ANPCB, has openly expressed its delight with the agreement's "pursuit of the dismantling of early departures through early retirement" and with its initiatives "designed to increase flexibility" (according to FEB/VBO's weekly information bulletin).

The Belgian Union of White-Collar Staff, Technicians and Managers (Syndicat des Employés, Techniciens et Cadres de Belgique/Bedienden, Technicien Kaders van België, SETCa/BBTK) affiliated to the Belgian General Federation of Labour (Fédération Générale du Travail de Belgique/Algemeen Belgisch Vakverbond, FGTB/ABVV), has greatly played down what has been presented as an advance on the part of the employers. "The contribution from the [sectoral social] fund to the supplementary benefit is limited both in time (one year) and in scope: for example, the fund benefited no more than 200 people in 2000. We cannot therefore talk of any retreat in the field of early retirement," claimed Erwin De Deyn, a SETCa/BBTK national secretary who took part in the negotiations over the new CPNAE/ANPCB agreement.

The CNE/LBC leadership is much less relaxed about the agreement's early retirement provisions. "FEB/VBO has scored a point, but we think only a very minor one at this stage. However, given the trend-setting role traditionally played by joint committee No. 218, there are grounds for believing that the provision dealing with early retirement will gain ground in future in other joint committees," said Felipe Van Keirsbilck of CNE/LBC's research centre.

It is important to note that during the negotiations over the 2001-2 intersectoral agreement, the unions insisted that early retirement from 58 should remain intact. The collective agreement now concluded in the CPNAE/ANPCB is an initial, if symbolic, step outside the framework of the intersectoral agreement. In the negotiations over the white-collar workers agreement, the concession on early retirement appears to have been used by trade union negotiators as a bargaining chip to obtain increases in the purchasing power of the workers covered by joint committee No. 218. CNE/LBC states that, taking into account both direct and indirect pay, the 2001-2 agreement represents a total overall pay increase of more than BEF 9 billion per year for the 310,000 employees covered by the joint committee.