Belgium: The working week becomes 4 days

The weekly working hours remain the same, but can be done in four days. Also the Belgium, after other countries and regions in the world, from Spain to New Zealand via Iceland and Japan, it approved its labor reform. Employees will be able to choose the four-day work week, with no pay cuts and the right to disconnect.

Workers can ask to do the 38 working hours per week in 4 and not 5 days. There is a trial period of six months and then the final choice between the long week and the short one. The employer can refuse the request giving reasons. The goal of this new timetable is to support parenting and the balance between work and private life. It is also possible to ask to work one week more and less another, always maintaining the same number of hours. For companies comes the obligation to communicate work shifts to employees at least one week in advance.

All companies with more than twenty employees arrive on right to training to create plans to develop skills. For riders and precarious workers comes greater protection with accident insurance and a tighter definition of their employment relationship.

Always for the same type of company, from 20 employees upwards, there is the right to disconnect. Outside working hours, employees are allowed not to answer office calls or emails.

Here too, as in other countries, it was the pandemic that accelerated a reform in the sense of labor market flexibility. Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo explained that the goal is to give people and companies more freedom to organize their working hours.