The government will bring together the social partners. The unions are threatening a general strike on Monday March 29.
The the deadline set for the social partners for the conclusion of an inter-professional agreement has now passed, without any agreement having been reached. The federal government will now meet with the social partners shortly.
In principle, employers’ organizations and trade unions had to conclude a 2021-2022 inter-professional agreement within two months of the publication of the report of the Central Council of the Economy setting in particular the wage margin.
Unions demand larger increase
This period having passed since Sunday (March 14), the ball is back in the government’s court. The social partners have barely negotiated, the points of view seem so distant from the start. The unions do not want to hear a wage standard capped at 0.4% (in addition to automatic indexation of wages) for the next two years, a “handout”, according to them. They want bigger pay rises to be possible in sectors that did well during the crisis. And the unions no longer want to hear about the 1996 law on wage formation as revised in 2017 under the Michel government and which is too rigid a corset in their eyes to allow any wage negotiation worthy of the name.
On the employers’ side, we cry out for the irresponsibility of the unions while with the coronavirus crisis Belgium has experienced in 2020 an unprecedented contraction of its economy for decades. And at the start of 2021, the economic context is hardly more fun.
The FGTB and the CSC also called last week for “a broad day of action accompanied by strikes” on Monday March 29.
It is in this context that the federal government is taking control. Consultation is planned “in the short term” between Prime Minister Alexander De Croo, Minister of Employment Pierre-Yves Dermagne and the social partners in order to draw up an inventory; to see if something is still possible or even, if so, to note the definitive failure of the negotiations.
It seems unlikely that social dialogue can be revived. The unions, the CSC and the FGTB at least, are preparing their day of action while the Federation of Belgian Enterprises (FEB) is choking at the prospect of this action. “The height of unreality? After the biggest economic shock ever of -6.5% of the GDP, paralyze the country because a salary increase of 3.2% is too low, it must be done ”, reacted on Twitter the boss of the FEB, Pieter Timmermans. The latter did not appreciate either the statement of the president of the PS, Paul Magnette, who said he supported “200%” the call to strike. An affront to entrepreneurship, further lamented Mr. Timmermans.