A draft Act on the gradual harmonisation of blue and white-collar occupational pensions has been submitted by the Minister of Pension's office.
A global harmonisation is necessary
Although the Constitutional Court’s 7 July 2011 judgment only concerned the difference in treatment between blue and white-collar workers with respect to the notice period duration and the waiting day (carensdag/jour de carence), the Court made it clear that any distinction is increasingly under pressure. Other differences should also be harmonised, such as the notice period start date, the trial period, holiday pay, guaranteed income as well as occupational pensions.
Harmonisation of occupational pension plans is an important (financial) concern
Most companies have different pension plans for their white and blue-collar workers or, as is often the case, a plan is only available for their white-collar workers. Moreover, most industry-wide pension plans are only foreseen for blue-collar workers.
For employers and industries, it will be crucial that the cost of such harmonisation is spread evenly over a longer period. Studies show that employers’ pension costs resulting from the harmonisation of blue and white-collar occupational pension plans will increase by 500 million euros per year.
Draft Act on the harmonisation of occupational pensions
It seems that the Minister for pensions does not want to wait until a new judgment is ruled by the Constitutional Court with regard to occupational pensions. The Minister’s Office has already elaborated a draft Act on the gradual harmonisation of blue and white-collar occupational pensions. This draft Act has been submitted to the National Labour Council.
Harmonisation period
On the basis of this draft Act, the social partners would have until 1 July 2023 or 2025 (yet to be decided) to harmonise occupational pension plans.
The main reasons behind this approach are legal certainty, avoiding unbearable financial costs and giving the social partners ample time to eliminate differences in treatment by means of collective consultations.
Step-by-step implementation
This harmonisation should be implemented within two separate deadlines:
• The social partners must harmonise industry-level pension plans by 1 January 2018 or 2020;
• Employers must harmonise company-level pension plans by 1 July 2023 or 2025.
Why first a deadline for industry-level pension plans?
Logically, employers will wait until it is clear what will happen at industry level before harmonising company level pension plans.
In the event that industry-wide pension plans are not harmonised by 1 January 2018 or 2020, they will be continued during one year after which they will be automatically terminated.
This implies that the responsibility to harmonise these plans will be passed on to employers, taking into account the direct effect of CBAs on individual employment contracts. Employers will be forced to copy the terminated industry-wide pension plan at company-level.
Different categories remain possible
Other possible distinctions are not targeted. This implies that an employer can still create objective, reasonably justified, categories within the employee population (for example on the basis of the job classification used within the company).
Wage standard violation because of harmonisation is not sanctioned
It is also important to note that, in this draft Act, the legislator has foreseen that employers violating the wage norm when eliminating differences between the respective occupational pension plans of blue and white-collar workers will not be sanctioned.
Comments and recommendation
The transitional period until 2020/2023 that is provided for in the draft Act is very long and, in our opinion, there will be a lot of discussions between the different parties about this. Therefore, we suppose that the final deadline to harmonize the pension plans will be somewhere ‘in the middle’.
It is however safe to conclude that employers and industries should not panic immediately. When this draft Act is adopted, there will be sufficient time to harmonise occupational pension plans even though this will be a laborious and difficult job.
It is therefore recommended to start drawing up a pension plan inventory (including the industry-level pension plans) and to decide what the harmonised pension plans will look like.
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