Impact of new posting directive

Since August 2020, the new Posting of Workers Directive has applied in Belgium. Workers who end up in Belgium through foreign subcontracting are now working under almost the same labor and wage conditions as if they were employed in Belgium. This will level the playing field of the labor market in Europe for everyone. Do you work with foreign subcontracting? Then read below what will change for you and posted workers.

• Belgian employer responsible for regulatory compliance
• All employees equal before the law
• Biggest impact of posting directive after one year of employment
• If you work with L2E, nothing changes

Belgian employer responsible for regulatory compliance

The new Posting of Workers Directive is a strong weapon in the fight against illegal and unfair competition in the labor market. Indeed, Belgian users of posting are now jointly responsible: they must ensure that foreign companies comply with all obligations with respect to their employees and face criminal prosecution if they do not.

So: if you work with foreign workers posted by a foreign company, you must

• provide all laws and regulations applicable per profile to the foreign subcontractor - whether it is a temporary employment agency or not.
• be able to demonstrate that all seconded employees are effectively enjoying all associated benefits.

All employees equal before the law

Employees posted from abroad are therefore entitled to the same working and wage conditions as any employee or temporary worker employed in Belgium. This concerns

• Working time and its limitation,
• (Minimum) Wages and wage scales,
• Legal holidays,
• Minimum duration of paid vacation,
• Employee welfare
• Protective measures for pregnant women
• Non-discrimination
• Temporary Employment Regulations
• Employment
• ...

Only the statutory pension plan and a very specific work break are exempt.

Although most of these rules were already in place, the directive with the criminal prosecution aims to ensure that they are now actually complied with.

Biggest impact of posting directive after one year of employment

But the biggest change caused by the posting directive relates to posted workers who have been employed for 12 months. This is because then they will be completely assimilated to an employee employed in Belgium!

Indeed, workers employed through a foreign subcontractor are also entitled after one year to

• pension plan, to which the employer must contribute
• and the same rights as an employee employed in Belgium in connection with closure and termination of the employment contract.

By the way, there is an anti-circumvention mechanism for calculating the duration of the 12 months. In fact, some employers work with several posted employees who always replace each other and perform the same task in the same place to avoid this. But they too have to respect the more extensive package of working conditions after the first 12 months of employment. And so they too will have to charge higher costs.

If you work with L2E, nothing changes

Since Link2Europe employs its foreign employees in Belgium, you can have complete peace of mind. Everything is done correctly and correctly: our foreign employees are fully assured of all rights and obligations - just like Belgian employees.

Link2Europe is a recognized Belgian staffing company and relieves you of all the extras involved in the employment of foreign employees. No worries, no risks, just good employees for bottleneck occupations for the long term.

Know to what extent your foreign subcontractor is putting your business at risk?

Talk to us about it!