Agreement of the social partners on the extension of certain corona measures

On Monday 14 September, the social partners reached an important agreement within the National Labour Council on a series of issues related to the coronacrisis.

More specifically, the agreement concerns the following points:

• extension of the fact that temporary unemployment due to force majeure corona is treated as time worked for the annual leave. As a reminder, for the period from 1 February to 30 June 2020, a Royal Decree treats the days of temporary unemployment due to force majeure corona as time actually worked for both the holiday pay and the number of holidays. The social partners have agreed to continue this treatment for as long as the temporary unemployment scheme due to force majeure corona continues, provided that employers are compensated.
• retroactive extension of collective labour agreement (CLA) No. 147 from 1 July 2020 up to and including 31 December 2021. As a reminder, CLA No. 147 was concluded at the start of the coronacrisis to allow sectors and companies that had not concluded a CLA on this subject to have access to temporary unemployment for economic reasons for non-manual workers.
• extension until the end of this year of the freeze on decreasing unemployment benefits.
• neutralisation of corona parental leave, corona time credit and corona end-of-career time credit by means of an amendment to CLA No. 103 in order to allow an easy switch back to the classic scheme of time credit and end-of-career time credit.

Important note!

The social partners are now asking the government to take the necessary steps to implement this agreement in its entirety. So the ball is in the government's court.

At this stage, therefore, no text has yet been adopted on these various measures. They are therefore not yet in force at the moment.

We will of course keep you informed of all new developments in this area.

Source: FEB