Flemish white-collar union advocates pay harmonisation in health and welfare sector

During the spring 1999 Belgian sectoral bargaining round, the Flemish white-collar workers' union, LBC, has launched a notable proposal for wage solidarity between different groups of employees in subsectors of the health and welfare sector. The proposal is to use the total amount of money allowed by the government for pay increases (5.9% over 1999-2000) to finance pay harmonisation.

In Belgium, nurses responsible for hospital night shifts receive a different rate of pay from that of their colleagues who work in nursing homes doing the same job, only for another kind of "patient". Furthermore, when patients decide to remain in hospital following medical treatment, the nurses who take care of them work at a higher rate of pay compared with that of those nurses who would have taken care of the same patients had they opted for home care instead.

These differences in remuneration for similar, if not the same, functions have existed for many years and are largely a consequence of the different systems used by the government to subsidise various subsectors in health and welfare. The government has been promising the harmonisation of wages in the sector since 1991 but has never actually kept its promise due to a lack of financial resources. The price tag attached to harmonisation is very significant: it would cost the central government BEF 4.1 billion, and the Flemish regional government BEF 1.4 billion extra.

"What we do on our own, we do better", claim activists in the Landelijke Bedienden Central (LBC), the Flemish white-collar workers' trade union affiliated to the Confederation of Christian Trade Unions (Algemeen Christelijk Vakverbond/Confédération des Syndicats Chrétiens, ACV/CSC). In the spring 1999 collective bargaining round, they are proposing that the total bill allowed by the government for wage increases (the wage norm) - which stands at 5.9% over 1999-2000 (BE9811252F) - should be put into one large fund to be used to finance pay rate harmonisation. This would provide the sector with about BEF 5 billion. Through a system of solidarity between the more advantaged segments of the sector, which would not receive any wage increases at all, and the less advantaged segments, which would receive significant increases (to the level of harmonisation), the pay disparity problem could allegedly be largely solved over the next two years. The union's activists believe that this is necessary because the demarcation lines between the different segments are fading and the differentials are therefore no longer defensible.

A ballot organised amongst LBC members produced a large majority in favour of the idea. LBC even managed to convince other Flemish unions in the sector of its merits, even though they nevertheless advocate small pay increases even for the more advantaged segments of the sector. LBC's French speaking equivalent, Centrale Nationale des Employés (CNE) however, favours using the available resources for a further reduction in working time.

An agreement to achieve harmonisation over four years rather than the two-year period proposed by LBC is probably more realistic. It even seems that Christian-oriented employers in the sector are rather sympathetic towards the harmonisation idea. Of course, the final results of the bargaining round remain to be seen.