Maternity leave: end of the reduction!

An employee who is unfit for work during the last weeks of her pregnancy will not see her maternity leave reduced. The same applies if her contract is suspended due to certain other causes of suspension.

This is laid down retroactively to 1 March 2020 by the law of 12 June 2020 published in the Belgian Official Gazette of 18 June 2020.

Maternity leave: how does it work?

Maternity leave covers 15 weeks and consists of 2 periods: prenatal leave (6 weeks (or 8 weeks in case of a multiple birth)) and postnatal leave (9 weeks).

Prenatal leave is composed as follows:

• 1 week mandatory prenatal leave from the 7th day before the expected date of delivery,
• 5 weeks (or 7 weeks in case of a multiple birth) optional prenatal leave prior to the mandatory week of prenatal leave.

The 9 weeks postnatal leave starts on the day of delivery.

Postnatal leave may be extended by a period corresponding to the period during which the employee continued to work from the 6th week (or 8th week in case of a multiple birth) until the 2nd full week (= period of optional prenatal leave) prior to the actual date of delivery (i.e. an extension of maximum 5 weeks (or 7 weeks in case of a multiple birth)).

In order to determine the number of days of optional prenatal maternity leave to be transferred, not only the actual days worked must be taken into account, but also certain days of inactivity which are treated as actual days worked.

What has changed?

From 1 March 2020 the following periods of suspension will be treated as actual days worked:

• incapacity for work
• removal (prophylactic leave),
• temporary unemployment due to force majeure,
• economic unemployment of manual employees

In concrete terms, this means that an employee whose contract is suspended for these reasons during the period from the 6th week (or 8th week in case of a multiple birth) until the 2 nd week prior to the actual date of delivery, can transfer these days of suspension until after the postnatal leave.

What about the one-week extension in case of a difficult pregnancy?

The possibility for the employee to extend her postnatal leave (of 9 weeks) by one week in case of a difficult pregnancy is abolished. This extension was provided if the employee was unfit for work as a result of an illness or accident for the entire period from the 6th week (or 8th week in case of a multiple birth) prior to the actual date of delivery until the delivery.

By treating the periods of incapacity for work as actual days worked for the purpose of transferring optional prenatal leave, this provision no longer has a raison d'être.

However, this one-week extension continues to apply to an employee who is not entitled to the extension of postnatal leave by more than 4 weeks (or by more than 6 weeks in case of a multiple birth) on the basis of the new treatment of periods of incapacity for work as actual days worked.

Source: Law of 12 June 2020 amending the periods during the prenatal rest that may qualify for the extension of post-natal rest, Belgian Official Gazette of 18 June 2020.