For several years, Flanders has wanted to make July 11, the feast day of the Flemish Community, a paid public holiday. This proposal, carried mainly by the nationalists and the extreme right, will soon be officially ratified.
The Federal Minister for the Economy and Labour, Pierre-Yves Dermagne (PS), is currently working on a draft royal decree allowing an additional public holiday to be granted corresponding to the public holidays of each region.
This project is part of the Vivaldi government agreement, which stipulates that “the federated entities will have the possibility of transforming their public holiday into paid leave.”
Wallonia still has to decide
In practice, several details still remain to be settled. First of all, it is necessary to determine the exact dates of the holiday in each part of the country. If the Flemish government agreed on the date of July 11 on Wednesday and the Brussels government validated the date of May 8 (Iris Day) on Thursday, the decision remains pending on the Walloon side. “This point must still be the subject of a discussion in the Government”, specifies the office of the Walloon Minister-President, Elio Di Rupo (PS).
As the Walloon Region holiday falls every third Sunday in September, the preferred option would be to make the Monday following a legal holiday. The hypothesis of September 27, feast of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation, is also mentioned, which would allow a certain harmony with the French-speaking schools and the administrations of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation, which already observe a day off on this date.
The case of Flemings working in Wallonia, and vice versa, might also pose a problem. From a good source, we learn that it is the employer’s place of business that should be taken into consideration to grant the leave. Thus, a worker working for an employer whose operating headquarters is located in the Flemish Region will have leave on July 11.
Who will pay ?
The financing of this additional day off is particularly questionable. The government agreement provides that this paid leave can be granted “at no additional budgetary cost.” To limit the economic impact, the N-VA suggested in its bill to no longer recover public holidays falling on Sundays. On the strength of its separatist convictions, the Vlaams Belang pleaded outright to abolish the national holiday of July 21 as a legal holiday and to replace it with regional holidays. Eventually, it will be nothing. The firm Dermagne confirms that it will indeed be an additional paid holiday, thus bringing the number of annual legal holidays to eleven, once morest ten currently.
Does the draft royal decree therefore not respect the government agreement? Yes. For the firm Dermagne, the term “budgetary cost” should be understood as the state budget, and not that of the employers. In other words, the state will not toast, but companies will.
“An important salary handicap”
A reading that makes employers jump, for whom this eleventh public holiday will inevitably lead to additional salary costs. “It is becoming unmanageable for companies, criticizes Monica De Jonghe, director general of the Federation of Belgian Companies (FEB). We are already in an extremely complicated situation with generalized inflation, and we still want to impose new costs on us. ” In an opinion issued in February by the National Labor Council, employers’ organizations estimated that the introduction of an additional public holiday would lead to an increase in hourly wage costs of 0.45%. “This would be on top of the 0.4% wage standard that has been granted in almost all sectors. By the end of 2022, this might result in an even greater wage handicap compared to Belgium’s neighboring countries.”
Finally, the FEB deplores the “additional difficulties” for the organization of work in companies which have several headquarters or branches in the different regions of the country.
