No return to 40 hours in Belgium

Construction workers’ unions in both Belgium’s main union confederations, CSC and FGTB, have rejected a call by the employers for a return to a 40-hour week.

Belgian building workers have had a 38-hour week since 2001, equivalent to 1,750 hours a year. However, the employers argue that, because bad weather closes sites in the winter, in practice only 1,450 hours are worked. This means that Belgian employers cannot compete effectively with non-Belgian construction companies bringing workers from outside the country, who are not limited to a 38-hour week. The result they say, is that jobs are lost to foreign companies

The unions reject this. They point out that rest days are already largely taken during the winter, while employers can ask their workers to work up to 45 hours a week for up to half the year on an overtime basis.

Rik Desmet from the FGTB explains that this demand is not new. The employers “ask for more flexibility … every time the agreement is negotiated,” he says. However, agreeing to it would, in Desmet’s view, “make construction into a seasonal industry”.

The unions argue that longer hours are not the way to tackle the loss of jobs to foreign building companies.

Instead employers and unions should work together to ensure that all construction workers in Belgium have the same terms and conditions, no matter what country they come from.