Belgium invents a four-day week in its own way
If it promises flexibility and modernity to Belgian workers, the new measure, which will allow them to combine their working hours over four very full days, does not only make people happy. It is, moreover, only one of the elements of a government agreement which, as always in Belgium, is a rather disparate compromise.
It is “one of the most emblematic measures” of the agreement presented on February 15 by the Belgian government: the four-day week. As explained The Free Belgium, it is not a question of reducing working time, but of offering the worker the possibility of combining his hours to free himself for a day, or even of working “more hours one week, and less the next. This will in principle allow parents on joint custody to better reconcile private and professional life.
If the formula “four-day week” sounds good, the “measure, however, arouses many fears as to possible perverse effects, Remark Le Vif-L’Express. From the increase in undeclared work to the incentive to seek additional work. Not to mention that this reduced week presupposes the fulfillment of “nine and a half hours a day”, to add The evening, who sees it “two defeats” for the left-wing parties in government: they “Have just given up for a time on a collective reduction and a sharing of working time, at the same time as they have buried this conquest of yesterday which was the eight-hour day of work”.
On the waves of RTBF, the president of the socialist union FGTB is not angry:
In the field, ten-hour days are not possible for a certain number of professions. It also means daycares and schools accessible 22 hours a day. This increases the risk of accidents at work.
The glass is always, at best, half full
This measure is only one element of the government agreement, which, being made up of several very different parties (currently seven), traditionally results in inconsistent compromises. Thus the long-awaited is reformed, “As you might expect, a compromise made up of odds and ends for
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carol lyon