A 32-hour working week - the key to employment in Belgium?

LBC/NVK, Belgium's largest white-collar union, recently held its four-yearly statutory congress under the slogan "Keys for Employment". During the congress, LBC/NVK outlined the campaigns to be carried out across sectors and companies over the next four years.

LBC/NVK, the largest white-collar union in Belgium and an affiliate of the Confederation of Christian Trade Unions (CSC/ACV) recently held its four-yearly statutory congress under the slogan "Keys for Employment". The LBC/NVK leadership confronted activists with strategic choices for union campaigns on such issues as "tele-home employment", local employment initiatives and quasi-self employment amongst others, and also reductions in working time. Cuts in working time became the object of much controversy between leadership and activists, which led eventually to the adoption of resolutions that differed significantly from what the leadership had expected and hoped for.

During the previous congress in 1993, LBC/NVK had taken a stance in this debate by demanding a reduction in collective working time to 32 hours a week without loss of pay and with a guarantee for compensatory new employment. However, practice over the last four years and the last round of negotiations have shown that this type of demand could not be fulfilled. Not a single collective agreement negotiated by LBC/NVK includes this point. In the light of this, the leadership proposed opting for a more realistic approach and change of strategy. Reductions in collective working time are only one way to redistribute employment, and other strategies also exist. In negotiations at sector level, the social partners can decide what the opportunities and options are, taking into account its various relevant characteristics.

In addition, the leadership had calculated that a reduction of collective working time from 38 to 32 hours a week without loss of pay would be the equivalent of a 16% increase in the cost of employment. A reduction from 36 to 32 hours equals a 12.5% increase. These figures do not coincide with the narrow margin for wage increases allowed for by the Government's "Maastricht straitjacket" which come to only 6% including consumer prices index increases for the 1997/8 period.

After much debate, however, activists reached a different verdict: they decided to keep to their original point of view. The LBC/NVK will according to the resolution "use all possible means in the next rounds of collective bargaining to strive for the reduction in collective working time to 32 hours, in the form of a four-day working week, without loss of pay and with compensatory new employment".