Career saving

The whole idea behind the new concept is to allow employees to save "time" in view of taking days off at a later stage in their career.

The legislator defines the notion "time" as follows:

• the hours of voluntary overtime for which no compensation rest has to be taken (concerning the topic "voluntary overtime", see section 2); this concerns 25 hours per year, possibly to be increased to 60 hours;
• supplemental days of vacation, granted by collective labour agreement, concluded at sector level or at company level; it is striking, in our opinion, that supplemental vacation days, granted on an individual basis, are not included;
• the number of hours of work, performed – in accordance with the system of gliding work time schedules (concerning this topic of "gliding work time schedules", see section 12) – in excess of the average weekly work time at the end of the applicable reference period;
• the hours of overtime, performed because of an extraordinary increase of the workload and because of an unforeseen necessity, for which the employee, as it pleases him, is not legally obliged to take compensation rest; in accordance with article 26bis §2bis of the Labour Act, that number of hours is fixed at 91 hours, possibly to be increased up to 130 or 143 hours.

Upon insistence of the industrial relations partners represented in the National Labour Council, the legislator has invited them to work out a detailed regulation concerning career saving by collective labour agreement entered into within the framework of the National Labour Council within a period of 6 months, which may extended by another 6 months.

Pending the conclusion of such a collective labour agreement, the coming into force of the statutory stipulations is suspended.

In the (unlikely) event of failure of entering into a collective labour agreement within the framework of the National Labour Council, the legislator has provided for the possibility to make detailed arrangements by collective labour agreement entered into at sector level and at company level.

A number of delicate and complex issues will have to be resolved and adequate solutions will require a lot of inventiveness and imagination.