Advice of the National Labour Council

As is the case before every social election procedure, the minister of Employment requested an advice from the National Labour Council (NLC) with regard to a number of issues that raised during the former social elections (and with regard to its possible solutions).

The NLC rendered its advice on 7 December 2010 (advice nr. 1748 - French version - Dutch version).

In the framework of the social elections of 2008 a moratorium intervened with regard to the required threshold of employed workers for the organization of social elections (100 workers for the works council, while the unions requested to fix the threshold at 50 workers). An evaluation had to take place before the end of 2010.

In its advice, the NLC does not treat the aforementioned issue.

Hence, it limits its advice to technical issues with regard to the smooth preparation and process of the social elections.

Indeed, the following diverse items are being discussed: the appointment of the secretary of the works council, the concept of a "worker" and assimilations thereof, the reporting mode of the number of employed workers, the determination of a Technical Business Unit, the suspension of the procedure, taking into account temporary workers for determining the number of mandates, the ability to provide electronically candidate lists, the number of witnesses that have to be present during the voting operations, the convocation of the voters (in particular the limitation of the use of registered letters), the classification of non-elected candidates, the replacement possibilities of the employer's representatives, the possibility to organize social elections per regional electoral district (in a way to assure a balanced representation in companies with a high dispersion of personnel).

We will keep you posted on any further developments.