Belgium -Social dialogue leads to several mini-agreements -December 19, 2014

In a harsh political climate the social partners met at confederal level to discuss several labour policy issues that the government has sought to cut. The talks resulted in creating space for collective agreements on the prolongation of early retirement provisions (at the age of 60, and for arduous work at the age of 58) for another 3 years, on the harmonisation of the sick leave schemes that apply separately to blue collar and white-collar staff and finally on the application of a time credit scheme at the end of a career. The question is how the government will react that also has announced the freezing of wages for 2015 and 2016 as well as suspending inflation indexation of wages.

French: http://www.lesoir.be/737939/article/actualite/belgique/2014-12-18/accord ...  

Dutch: http://www.demorgen.be/economie/sociale-partners-bereiken-compromis ...      

For more information, please contact the editor Jan Cremers, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies (AIAS) cbn-aias@uva.nl or the communications officer at the ETUI, Mariya Nikolova mnikolova@etui.org. For previous issues of the Collective bargaining newsletter please visit http://www.etui.org/E-Newsletters/Collective-bargaining-newsletter. You may find further information on the ETUI at www.etui.org, and on the AIAS at www.uva-aias.net.