The Belgian government has made ‘competitiveness’ into its Holy Grail. This quest was regulated by the Law “on the promotion of employment and preventive safeguarding of competitiveness”, better known as “the law of 96” or “the law on wage norms”. This law set down that Belgian wages should not rise faster – i.e. should evolve at the same pace – as those in neighbouring countries. To achieve this, as well as salary indexation, a margin is fixed which wages may not rise beyond. The year 1996 was taken as year zero. The FGTB trade union federation has always challenged this law because it severely limited the social partners’ right to freely conclude wage agreements in line with productivity evolutions.
For their part, the employers soon judged the law to be inadequate since the norms rested on sometimes inaccurate forecasts, and it was difficult to make corrections at a later stage. They requested, and obtained from the government a strengthening of the law of 96 with a system for correcting “slippages” and an imperative norm.
We will continue to oppose this decision and insist that wage bargaining should be the exclusive competence of the social partners. Unfortunately, the government is taking a different direction and wishes to force wage-setting into a straitjacket.
Failed austerity policy
Austerity policy has been a failure throughout Europe. It is not by chance that economic recovery is slowest where austerity policy is tightest in the Eurozone, especially since the crisis took hold for the first time in Greece in 2010. Workers and pensioners, job-seekers and those suffering long-term sickness – in short, everyone has had to tighten their belts for nearly 10 years. As the Martens-Gol government promised in the 1980s to justify austerity: “today’s economies are tomorrow’s investments and the day-after tomorrow’s jobs…”
That does not hold up! It is time to move on.
As the ETUI underlines, with the loss of purchasing power because of austerity, the whole of Europe has become more dependent, in recent years, on the economic situation of other continents.
In Europe, we cannot expect that in future only the Chinese and Brazilians will buy our products because they still see their purchasing power growing.
- A wage rise for all workers, and therefore greater purchasing power for all, stimulates domestic (and European!) demand for goods and services.
- A European minimum wage high enough to ensure that everyone can live in dignity and build their future.
- Strong unions imply stronger negotiating power. The more workers are covered by collective bargaining, the more company profits will be fairly distributed and purchasing power protected.
Together with significant public investment in renewable energy and public transport, for example, this is the best way to get the economy back on track.
Without this, who will companies produce for in the future?
From a feature on the #ourpayrise campaign in the FGTB ‘Magazine Syndicats’ (Belgium), May 2017 – translated from the French
