Sectoral agreement 2019 - 2020 for joint industrial committee 209
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The social dialogue in Belgium is organized on 3 levels: inter-sectoral/federal, sectoral and company level. At the end of April of this year, the wage norm and several employment measures which serve as the basis for the negotiations on a sectoral level, have been determined on a federal and inter-sectoral level.
Within JIC 209 these negotiations have been finalized at the end of June, resulting in a sectoral agreement for the years 2019-2020 (valid from 01.01.2019 until 31.12.2020). We would like to provide you hereby with an overview of the most important decisions for the upcoming two years in your sector of industry.
Wages
The provisions regarding the wages are in principle limited to the scaled and scalable white collar workers. The scope of application can be extended to the non-scaled and the non-scalable white collar workers according to a specific procedure depending on whether or not the company has a labour union delegation.
Employers can decide themselves how to use the available wage margin of 1,1%. This needs to be agreed on a company level in a joint agreement and can be differentiated for specific categories of employees or employees individually. The procedure on how to allocate the available wage margin depends on whether or not the company has a labour union delegation.
The agreement regarding this allocation needs to be concluded by 30.09.2019. If the company does not take any company-specific initiative to implement the wage margin, the actual gross salaries will be increased with 1,1% on 01.07.2019.
Attention: if your company is located in the province of Brabant, Luik/Liège, Luxemburg, Namen/Namur or Henegouwen/Hainaut, where the sectoral year-end premium is not equal to a full month’s salary and if the company does not grant a higher year-end premium on company level, the available wage margin of 1,1% will be used fully or partially to increase the year-end premium.
The minimum salary of the sector increases with 52,25 EUR on 01.07.2019.
The eco vouchers can be replaced by another benefit at the latest on 30.09.2019.
Mobility Unless more beneficial provisions exist on a company level, the following rules apply as from 01.01.2020 onwards:
- Increase of the threshold for the employer’s participation in the commuting costs for the private transport: increase of the salary threshold to 4.960 EUR.
- Private transport: reimbursement of 0,06 EUR per kilometer (minimum 1,50 EUR per working day and maximum 6,5 EUR).
- Bike allowance: reimbursement of 0,15 EUR per kilometer (maximum 6 EUR per working day).
Unemployment scheme with company allowance and time credit
For time credit on specific grounds, JIC 209 applies the general rules as they are applicable in collective labour agreement n°103. This implies that employees will benefit from 51 months of time credit for reasons of care taking and from 36 months for training purposes, given that they meet the conditions.
For time credit in view of landing positions (career wind-down), JIC 209 already had the possibility of 1/5th time credit with a statutory allowance for employees as from the age of 55 on the condition that they could demonstrate a long career (35 years), a heavy and arduous profession or 20 years of night work and provided that they had a seniority of 2 years in the company. A half-time scheme with a statutory allowance is possible as from the age of 57 under the aforementioned conditions. These schemes of time credit have been extended with the present agreement.
As far as the unemployment scheme with company allowances is concerned, the agreements made on sectoral level will be extended, allowing employees to benefit from this scheme if they meet certain conditions.
Training
The individual right to training of the employees is extended from 8 to 16 hours.
