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In early June 2001, some 3,000 Belgian childminders (the great majority of them women, but a few men too) held a protest march in Brussels to press for a proper social security status. More than a year before, the federal government had promised this group - who currently have no social security cover - such a status. Their protection has now been scheduled to start in July 2001, but the details are yet to be finalised. One bill on the issue proposes that childminders become "fictitious" employees who are assumed to earn the minimum wage.
For parents with a job outside the house, or who want such work, good and accessible childcare is essential (especially for pre-school children). Crèches are one possibility and, in addition, many Belgian parents rely on childminders (known often as onthaalouders/gardiennes, though the terminology has not yet taken a definite form yet - eg onthaalmoedersand opvanggezinnenare also used in Flemish). These are nearly always women who take care of a small number of children (generally about four) in their own homes. In contrast to crèches, childminders usually live nearby and are available at irregular hours, which is important to parents who work irregular hours themselves. Three types can be distinguished:
- informal childminders who are part of the "clandestine" economy, or mothers who have formed a mutual network to care for each other's children;
- self-employed childminders, who are paid directly for their childcare services; and
- registered childminders, who fall under the supervision of the authorities.
At the beginning of June 2001, some 3,000 registered childminders (the great majority of them women, but a few men too) held a protest march in Brussels to press for a proper social security status, which had been promised to them more than a year before by the federal coalition government of Liberals, Socialists and Greens. This social protection has now been scheduled to start in July 2001, but the details are yet to be finalised.
Registered childminders
Registered childminders are coordinated by childminding services at local level, usually the district or municipality level. Each such service usually coordinates at least 14 childminders and is often connected to a crèche. These services form the link between the childminders and the authorities: the local authorities, the local welfare centre, the community in question and their family and child departments - either Kind en Gezin (in Flanders and Brussels), the Office de la naissance et de l'enfance (in the Walloon Region and Brussels) or the Dienst für Kind und Familie (in the German-speaking community).
In Flanders, there are 7,925 registered childminders, while the French-speaking community has 2,700 and the German-speaking community 72. They represent respectively 64%, 47.5%, and 88% of all subsidised childcare in the communities. According to the logic of the federalised government services, childcare is a "personal" matter, and therefore a concern of the language communities. However, the employment conditions of workers are determined by the federal Belgian government. Federal measures therefore have repercussions at the level of the communities, which means that there must be adequate consultation between the authorities and a mutual willingness to compromise.
Over time, the community authorities have made increasingly higher demands on childminders, regulating their infrastructure and the maximum number of children in their care and setting educational and hygienic standards. Childminders have also been involved in continuing training schemes. Furthermore, because childminders often care for children of parents who work irregular hours, they are frequently obliged to work long days themselves, or at least to be available. In short, childminders are increasingly becoming childcare professionals.
However, at the same time, their working conditions are extremely precarious. The most striking fact is that childminders do not build up any social security entitlement. As a rule, female childminders fall back on their husbands' social security, a practice that is untenable today, both on principle (as a gender equality issue) and in view of current social trends (the increasing divorce rate and the growing numbers of single-parent families and male childminders). Health and disability insurance and pension rights have become an individual requirement. Moreover, many childminders start this activity following a period of joblessness, during which they were entitled to unemployment benefits. If they stop childminding after a few years, they are no longer entitled to unemployment benefits.
The reason behind this lack of social security is the fact that childminders still have "volunteer" status. By definition, volunteers do not receive wages for their work, but only a "compensation". Consequently, a decrease of the number of children in their care (due to illness, for instance, but also during the holidays) means that they receive a proportionally lower compensation. There is one, albeit small, advantage to this volunteer status: the fact that the compensation is tax-exempt. However, basically, this volunteer status is clearly fictitious, because it is totally incompatible with the professional demands made on childminders. Of course, introducing a system with full social security contributions would considerably increase the cost of this form of childcare. Depending on the scheme used, either the government or the working parents would have to foot the bill. For the childminders themselves, such a system would result in a different balance of costs and benefits.
Political discussion and measures
Over the past two years, several bills have been introduced to reform the status of childminders. There is very little difference of opinion between the major political parties on the crux of the matter, and most bills propose to make childminders into a subcategory of home workers. The only party to take a different view is the extreme right-wing Vlaams Blok, which proposes a childcare worker's wage and social status for parents who stay at home to raise their children (for "parents", read "mothers", according to critics, as Vlaams Blok believes that "a woman's place is in the home").
Given the fact that registered childminders are de facto under the authority of the childminding services, as they are guided and controlled by them, their working conditions are, to all intents and purposes, the same as those of contractual employees. Roger Blanpain, lecturer in labour law at the Catholic University of Leuven (KUL), has advised the childminders' lobby group to enforce their rights by means of the public prosecutor and the labour court (reported in the De Standaard newspaper on 15 May 2001). In his view, childminders fall, de facto, in the category of home workers, and more particularly, are covered by the joint committee for healthcare services.
The only problem with classifying childminders as home workers could be that childminders are actually under too much control. The law on home work specifies that home workers do not fall under the direct supervision of their employer, whereas childminders are subject to unannounced inspections at any time (this was noted in a bill introduced by Anne-Marie Lizin and Jean-Pierre Malmendier in the senate in February 2000, which nevertheless proposes home worker status for childminders). Of course, this constitutes another reason to consider registered childminders as contractual employees.
There are two more points on which the various bills differ.
- There is the question of whether childminders should have a choice between becoming employees and practising their profession as self-employed workers. The bills introduced by the Christian Democrat opposition (bill 1277/001 introduced in the Chamber of Representatives by Greta D'Hondt et al) and the Green parties (bill 1245/001 introduced by Marie-Thérèse Coenen and Joos Wauters) aim at a generalised home worker status. The bill introduced by the Social Democrats Magda De Meyer and Colette Burgeon (bill 596/001) leaves a little more room for childminders to continue as self-employed workers.
- The proposals differ as regards the financing mechanism they propose and their financial implications. The D'Hondt bill is the most consistent in this regard. It is based on the assumption that the childminding services would become the employers of the childminders, but benefit from the same reduction of social security contributions that is currently granted to sheltered workshops and to services for home help and geriatric care. The De Meyer/Burgeon bill is financially more feasible, but the drawback is that it develops concepts that will probably meet with little understanding from the public. It describes the childminding services as "fictitious" employers (because they do not bear the same financial responsibility as real employers) and the envisaged social security of the employees is based on the "fictitious "assumption that childminders earn the minimum wage.
Under the latter system, the required social security coverage could be guaranteed with very low employee contributions (EUR 62 per month). In any case, the government is more likely to opt for a solution that is feasible and technically complicated than for one that is radical and clear. The framework agreement on the issue at the federal level specifies only that: (a) childminders will be granted full employee status in the longer term; and (b) that they will enjoy full social protection from 2002 onwards.
Commentary
The situation of childminders is a problem that generally falls outside the scope of established industrial relations. Their difficulty in organising themselves is something that they share with all home workers. However, on top of that, the childcare sector has traditionally belonged to the informal and volunteer economy. It could rightly be remarked that the government has forced the sector to become professional without being willing to bear the financial repercussions of this development in the field of social security.
This is an issue that the social partners would also rather avoid, but it can no longer just be ignored. Working parents today demand a variety of childcare options, and the great flexibility of childminders would be hard to replace. In view of the professional requirements childminders have to meet, a formal remuneration and social security system has become a necessity for them. In the meantime, this appears to be a social trend, in which one newly established fact seems to lead to another without much ado or debating.
There is also a downside to the professionalisation of childcare. The fact that very young children are made to spend much of their time in an environment that has to meet all kinds of fixed criteria and standards leaves very little room for the closed informality of the neighbourhood and the family. The high cost of flexible childcare is all too easily passed on to the government and the community, whereas it is the employer who benefits most from that flexibility.
A last point is that the step towards professional childminders brings us quite close to remuneration of parenthood in general. Even though this issue is largely circumvented in the current discussion, it could well resurface in future debates. It requires more social discussion, not "noiseless" changes. It should not be difficult to come up with at least a few strong arguments for keeping the government and economic relations outside the sphere of the neighbourhood, the circle of friends and the home. (Jan De Schampheleire, VUB-TESA)