Proposition 54K0584

Projet de loi modifiant la loi du 16 mars 1971 sur le travail en ce qui concerne le travail dominical.

General information ¶

Authors

MR David Clarinval, Stéphanie Thoron
Open Vld Egbert Lachaert, Nele Lijnen, Vincent Van Quickenborne

Submission date

Nov. 7, 2014

Official page

Visit

Status

Adopted

Requirement

Simple

Subjects

labour law Sunday working

Voting ¶

Voted to adopt

CD&V Vooruit LE Open Vld N-VA LDD MR

Voted to reject

Groen Ecolo PS | SP PVDA | PTB

Abstained from voting

DéFI ∉ VB

Party dissidents ¶

• Olivier Maingain (MR) abstained from voting.

Contact form ¶

Do you have a question or request regarding this proposition? Select the most appropriate option for your request and I will get back to you shortly.

Discussion ¶

Oct. 4, 2018 | Plenary session (Chamber of representatives)

Full source

The rapporteurs, Mr Stefaan Vercamer and Wim Van der Donckt refer to the written report.

Mr. Speaker, dear colleagues, the bill under consideration is not a good proposal because it completely reverses the logic of the 1971 law on Sunday Work.

The basis of labour legislation is to protect workers and, in this case, to guarantee the observance of Sunday rest. This is a social achievement, or rather a social "conquest" (from the word conquest).

Today, the right-wing majority, rather than limiting and regulating exceptions to Sunday rest, wants to extend work on Sundays by allowing stores to open every Sunday in tourist centers and resorts.

In 2014, the Court of Cassation ruled that the law must be complied with. In other words, the stores in question can only be open for thirteen Sundays outside of the tourist season. Hence this bill that introduces a legislative change according to which the restrictions on Sunday rest apply to the individual worker rather than to the company. As a result, major stores will be able to open every Sunday of the year via staff rotation, undermining the right to Sunday rest for many workers and creating a downward competitive spiral with increasingly poor working conditions and flexibility-oriented profit for companies. But it is true that with this right-wing majority, we are accustomed to this kind of deconstruction of the social acquired or “conquered” of this country.

In this regard, I would like to quote the workers’ representatives who have issued a negative opinion to the National Labour Council. I quote an excerpt from this opinion: “It is the workers’ movement that has imposed Sunday rest as well as the whole legislation on working time. We must not underestimate the importance of Sunday rest, of allowing in a society the vast majority of citizens to spend their legally planned free time at the same time. This contributes to ⁇ ining social cohesion. Similarly, the collective nature of Sunday rest brings precisely a mandatory pose in the week offering workers the opportunity to do things that are not possible other days, such as visiting family, meeting friends, attending a sports competition, etc.

Sunday rest gives a space of freedom to workers and allows them to get rid of the feeling of being under constant pressure for a few moments.”

The trade union organizations further mention: “In addition, the bill in question does not intervene at the request of the relevant sectoral social partners. Neither employers’ organizations nor workers’ organizations have ever made such a request in a parity committee. The members representing workers’ organisations therefore consider that no request from the sectors concerned can be retained for the purpose of adapting the legal and regulatory framework.”

You will understand, we will vote against this bill that leads to a social downturn for many workers who are increasingly struggling to find a balance between their work and private life and – I add this in relation to the pension debate – that they want to work even longer in their careers.

Mr. Speaker, in essence, the bill we are debating and we will vote today, has been, in the course of its course, extremely remodelled. His original version, the one submitted by the various colleagues, was totally unbearable. And this is because, in the face of a supposed modification of the legislation on Sunday work that would have affected only tourist areas, it actually affected Articles 13 to 17 of the Labor Act of 1971 and, therefore, Sunday work in all sectors. This is not just about tourist areas.

The National Labour Council had taken a decision and positioned itself on the initial bill. Let us be clear! If you were stubborn in the initial version of the bill, I would never have voted for it because it undermined a balanced approach to work/private life reconciliation.

You have decided to greatly reduce the scope of this bill. That is the least that can be said. As much as it is true that it clarifies things as to how the limitation of the number of Sundays must be understood at the level of the workers and, in particular, so that the counting is made for each individual worker, as well as for the rest, the bill, as it remains today, no longer concerns only the tourist areas and resorts with the ceiling of thirty-nine Sundays per calendar year.

Given that this draft law was initially largely amputed and remodelled, given that it does not exceed thirty-nine Sundays per calendar year for each individual worker, and that, in addition, the King will have the task of clarifying what he meant by resorts, climatic stations and tourist centers as well as the conditions of recognition, we will vote positively for this very small remnant of the draft law which remains in relation to an initial proposal which, in itself, was unacceptable.

The Minister of Employment is not there, but I will allow myself to say how much we have a concern in the legislation of our country. Indeed, at the level of recognition of tourist centres, the criteria are not the same depending on whether one is recognized by the SPF Economy or by the SPF Employment. We find ourselves today with tourist areas that are either recognized at the level of SPF Employment and SPF Economy, or that are only recognized on one side, most often at the level of SPF Economy. I think there would be a serious work to be done in the revision of the legislation so that we avoid tomorrow, when new requests or when installing new shops, unnecessary situations where a store can open but, at the same time, there is no staff member who can work there, which is obviously a nonsense in matters of legislation.