Work, work, work leads to strike, strike, strike

On Monday, immediately after a week-long strike at the railway, Belgian trade unions hold a ‘national strike’. They protest against measures of the new federal government, mostly concerning pensions. The De Wever government wants to get 80 per cent of middle-aged people at work, but in a country with generous social security, this is not evident.

Unemployment is low in Belgium, lower than ever in recent decades. But that doesn’t mean employment is high enough.

Of all 20 to 64-year-olds, some 72 per cent are at work. This is good, but not good enough. On the one hand, employers have major difficulties finding workers. On the other hand, thousands of Belgians who could be working and producing welfare are not, and, as such, often receive allowances. The De Wever government, in search of money to reduce its huge budget deficit, wants to raise the employment rate to 80 per cent (the rest are students, people who are sick or handicapped, people in between jobs, …).

Pension

To achieve this goal, the centre-right governments at the federal and regional level are looking at different ‘target groups’. The most obvious one is the people dreaming of early retirement. In Belgium, there used to be a large gap between the official retirement age and the real one, with only a few people continuing after 56 or 58. This is changing, there less early retirements and the official age is going from 65 to 67.

But, as is so often the case in Belgium, there are exceptions. And here, the exceptions are in the public service: many types of civil servants still have the right to end their career even before they turn 60. On top of this privilege, they also get a higher (official) pension allowance than workers in the private sector.

The staff of the Belgian railway companies made it very clear in recent weeks -and will continue to do so in the coming weeks- that they want to keep it this way. Civil servants from other sectors (teachers for example) sing the same song.

Unemployed

Another ‘target group’ are the unemployed, mostly the long-term unemployed. In Belgium, it’s still possible to receive unemployment benefits for many years. The government now wants a two-year limit. In Flanders, this is hardly perceived as a problem, given the very few unemployed. But in the south, many people would feel the effect of the cut.

There are also some side effects. For example, if people are thrown out of the unemployment system, they could end up knocking on the door of the local social services, for help, which could put too much pressure on some of those services. Other examples of side effects are linked to the fact that the unemployment system has been used to finance other objectives, such as providing an income to adults pursuing a new study or to artists between assignments.

There are many other examples of groups and systems that would be affected by the work work work-goal. The federal plan includes many measures to make sure people at work earn more, and people with an allowance less.

The protest doesn’t only come from trade unions. Experts point to some inconsistencies. One being that governments are also cutting in the budgets for educating and training workers. This way, people who want to get qualifications the labour market is in need of, are no longer supported by the government.

But the main obstacle is the ‘quality’ of the people who should enter the labour market. Almost everybody in Belgium who is fit, able and willing to work, is already at work. This means that the additional percentages in the employment rate, have to come from people with a lower productivity, as economists call it. Getting these people out of social security and onto the labour market, will cost more and bring in less money than the governments hope for, experts warn.

_{#FlandersNewsService | © BELGA PHOTO HATIM KAGHAT}