Rojgar Job News

Although we still don’t have a new federal government in Belgium (elections were on 26 May but who’s counting …), we are already heading towards the next vote. Social elections, that is, to appoint the employee representatives in the Health & Safety Committee and Works Council. In a previous blog [here], we gave some background on the numbers that will determine whether you are required to organise social elections in your company, or on group level. Now the numbers are in and you should know whether you are on the hook. If you are, you need to start preparing for the first formal steps. You should inform your employees and your current employee representatives in writing no later than the 60th day preceding the posting of the message indicating the date of the elections (X-60). This will be somewhere between 13 December if you organize the elections on 11 May, up to 26 December if you organize the elections on 24 May. The communication should describe the level a...

In a previous blog, in a world before the coronavirus hit Europe, we noted the social elections that Belgian employers have to organise in 2020 [here] for the appointment of employee representatives to the Works Council and Health & Safety Committee. Being a representative of that sort (and also being a candidate for that role) gives wide-ranging protections against detriment and dismissal. As a consequence, with the social elections comes a Belgian peculiarity, the “occult period”. This is a period of 65 days, ending ultimately on 30 March, over which employees can stand as candidates in those elections but before the candidate list is communicated to the employer. It is therefore unaware who has that protection and who doesn’t. Practical consequence: all terminations are put on hold until April. Because of the Covid-19 crisis however, the social elections have been postponed, probably until the second half of November at the earliest. Mercifully the occult period...