Proposition 54K3464

Projet de loi relatif aux dispositions sociales de l'accord pour l'emploi.

General information ¶

Authors

CD&V Nahima Lanjri, Stefaan Vercamer
MR David Clarinval, Sybille de Coster-Bauchau
N-VA Jan Spooren
Open Vld Egbert Lachaert, Vincent Van Quickenborne

Submission date

Jan. 15, 2019

Official page

Visit

Status

Adopted

Requirement

Simple

Subjects

incapacity for work young person pay social security employment policy

Voting ¶

Voted to adopt

CD&V Open Vld N-VA MR PP

Voted to reject

Groen Vooruit Ecolo PS | SP DéFI PVDA | PTB

Abstained from voting

LE ∉ VB

Party dissidents ¶

• Olivier Maingain (MR) voted to reject.

Contact form ¶

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Discussion ¶

March 28, 2019 | Plenary session (Chamber of representatives)

Full source

The rapporteur is Mrs Thoron. It refers to the written report.

A few points on the social aspect of the job deal. First of all, I regret that so far we have not gathered the 50 votes allowing us to request the State Council’s opinion on an important amendment. Despite a positive impetus from our president, some parties have prevented this.

This bill is part of a package of 28 measures that the government MR-N-VA approved within the framework of the 2019 budget and this, before any consultation with the Regions, with the social partners; and this, in a logic in particular, not to say essentially, budgetary: bring 500 million euros for the 2019 budget. This estimate of 500 million euros has been challenged by the Court of Auditors.

In December last year, the government fell and the draft 2019 budget was withdrawn. This job deal was therefore no longer necessary for the budget to keep the way. But despite this, the four parties of the former majority still agreed to propose this jobs deal. However, I would like to emphasize that the degressive aspect of unemployment benefits is an exception. It is not included in the package offered here tonight. We can rejoice: at least one attack that could not be implemented by the parties of the former majority.

That being said, although we have been able to avoid this element, there remain in the social aspect of this job deal points on which I would like to insist, and against which we will vote. They will determine our overall vote.

The first is the articles 4 and 5, which relate to the youth salary. In fact, we will remember the March 2018 revitalization law, in which the MR-N-VA government had chosen to discriminate against young people under the age of 21 by reducing their salary from 6 to 18%. These were the famous start jobs. The government and the majority had envisaged that the employer who reduces a young man’s salary must pay him a flat-rate supplement, so-called to compensate for the net. We had denounced the measure by asking whether this supplement would really compensate for the net. We were given the right. This flat-rate supplement would not compensate for the actual loss.

But again you are proposing a measure that is just nothing different. This once again shows the lack of seriousness of the former government and the former majority who come back with a suitable proposal.

It is clear that this system is preferable, and better than the one that was considered at the time. However, the social partners are unanimously disadvantaged, for obviously different reasons. But this remains unfavorable for young people, and I will talk about that aspect. Not only is it discriminatory, it once again creates internal dumping between categories of workers, but it also has indirect effects on the social rights of these young people. We will vote against these articles. I wanted to highlight this aspect.

I would also like to highlight another one. This is the school clause for professions in shortage. A schooling clause is to oblige the worker who has received, during the execution of his employment contract, a specific training at the expense of the employer, to reimburse part of it if he leaves his employer within a specified period. There are precautions to prevent the worker from being somehow enslaved to his employer and can no longer leave him at the risk of having to reimburse considerable sums.

Here, one of the firewalls is blown up by forcing the worker to reimburse training provided in the regulatory or legal framework.

The social partners gave a divided opinion on the issue, employers being obviously for and workers against – rightly, in my opinion. This is another issue that we will oppose.

Overall, we can only oppose this social jobs deal, which is still an attack on workers.

Mr. Speaker, I already said at the beginning of the meeting that we, as in previous years, are still working on the implementation, months later, of a poorly and hastily drafted Summer Agreement of the previous government. Today we are talking about a number of measures from the so-called Employment Agreement. Fortunately, the worst measure from the employment deal, namely the increased degressivity of unemployment benefits, is not in the present bill. If the change of government has had an advantage, then it has.

This does not make the proposal a good proposal. On the contrary, this proposal also contains unassociative measures at the expense of workers. First of all, we need to reduce the minimum wage for young people. That is a shame, a real shame. There is now an entire construction being set up to pretend that the young people will not compromise their net wages. This structure is not only inoperable, it does not prevent young people from building less social rights. The benefits are based on gross wages and, by reducing gross wages, social rights are degraded. The whole struggle we have waged to give young people equal pay for equal work is thus overthrown.

A second measure that my group finds unacceptable is the extension of the training requirement. The training requirement means that a worker who has completed a training at the expense of the employer must reimburse the training costs if he leaves the company within a specified period. That is already a remarkable arrangement in itself, especially at a time when there are still too little training efforts. It also limits the mobility of workers. In this proposal, the training requirement is even extended to training in the context of a specialized profession, even if this arises from a legal or regulatory obligation to be able to exercise the profession. It has to be explained.

There are also measures in the proposal that we can understand. An outplacement for workers dismissed for medical force majeure is not illogical, but it would be much better for them to also get a termination compensation. After all, if we look at the non-associative policy on the reintegration of long-term patients, it has now become merely a dismissal machine. Seventy percent of those checked are fired without compensation.

Finally, we can support the measure to provide for a temporary right to disability insurance for those who continue to work after the retirement age. This latter measure is the only one that could rely on a positive opinion from the social partners.

All other measures received negative opinions. So please don’t tell me that the government considers social consultation important. For all these reasons, our group will not support the employment deal.

Mr. Speaker, dear colleagues, at this late hour, I will not repeat the various criticisms I have made in committee regarding this bill disguised as a bill, since this text applies part of the jobs deal concluded last summer by the government, when it was still a majority.

I will only briefly highlight one aspect that goes through this text, namely the myth of the shortage of jobs. In this context, once again we can say that the shadow of the FEB plays on our legislative work. In fact, on June 18, 2018, the FEB sounded the alarm bell saying, I quote: “The shortage that strikes the labour market brakes economic growth.” Only a month later, the Minister of Employment stated: “The shortage is a threat to economic growth.” It is almost word for word of the same terms.

The FEB added, and this is where it becomes even more interesting, that, I quote again: “Uncontrollable wage increases could further threaten the competitiveness of our companies.” It is in this context that we should read the proposal that is presented to us here. The myth of job shortages serves as an alibi to a series of measures aimed at getting people to work longer and longer, to increase gifts to employers, and to conduct an activation policy aimed at putting downward pressure on wages.

This activation policy, which is found in many provisions of this government and previous ones, drives people (unemployed, pre-retirement, sick, beneficiaries of social integration income) to accept any employment at any working conditions and at any salary. We have an employer who always invokes employment to receive gifts and other measures in favor of competitiveness but who, in reality, has a blue fear of full employment, because who says full employment says stronger ratio more favourable to workers, especially in the framework of wage negotiations that are still up to date. It is therefore within the framework of this employer strategy that we must read the text that is submitted to us here, a text that we will obviously not support.