BRUSSELS — The deaths of two people who had to wait for medical care due to labor demonstrations have soured this European country’s normally rosy view of unions.
The deaths in late October were linked to a 24-hour strike in Liege in Belgium’s French-speaking region, where 200 irate union members from the General Federation of Labor of Belgium, or FGTB, shut down a major highway to protest the government’s austerity policies.
The resulting traffic jams delayed a surgeon called to help an elderly woman who later died from a ruptured aneurism. Paramedics were also unable to reach a driver before he perished from a heart attack he suffered while his car idled in the massive backup.
“I think it was simply the final straw,” said Egbert Lachaert, a parliamentarian for the Flemish liberal party Open VLD, referring to the congested highway. “It was a very clear example of what everyone has felt for a quite a while now: that strikes are being used injudiciously.”
The Nov. 13 Paris attacks — and the clear links investigators have made to radical jihadis operating here — have dominated the headlines, but for many ordinary Belgians the problems of governance and security run much deeper.
Strike culture has long been strong in Belgium, a country of 11 million where 55 percent of workers belong to a labor union. (For U.S. private sector workers, the figure is just 6.6 percent.) But the resort to strikes and job actions has become especially intense since last year, when a center-right government took power for the first time in 20 years.
Prime Minister Charles Michel has been pursuing an austerity program of spending cuts to rein in the country’s bloated budget and rising debt. Labor leaders argue that Mr. Michel failed to consult them before cutting costs.
“The difficulty is that the government has a ready-made plan that questions all the social benefits we’ve fought for,” said Marc Goblet, secretary-general of the FGTB. “The attitude of the new government and that of employers now is that they no longer want to negotiate. So we undertook actions.”
But another prominent FGTB official conceded that the backlash against the October strike was forcing the powerful labor movement to consider altering its tactics.
“If the media are focusing more on the way we protest than on what we are protesting against, then we need to rethink our action,” said Francis Gomez, an FGTB official in Liege. “This is why we are considering new avenues.”
With 760,297 strike days — or one person walking off the job for one day — 2014 marked a 22-year high for labor strife in Belgium, according to the National Social Security Office. That’s 19 times the workdays lost to strikes in the neighboring Netherlands, whose population is 50 percent larger.
The strikes have come in all shapes and sizes.
Sanitation workers refused to pick up trash in Ghent for nine days. In a retirement home in East Flanders, health aides cared for residents but refused to dress them properly, opting instead to leave them in their pajamas all day. Police unions throughout the country declined to write parking tickets for a week last September. Other strikes have delayed court trials, left supermarket shelves empty and canceled school classes.
“Belgium is a paradise for strikers,” said Roger Blanpain, a retired professor who taught labor law for more than five decades at the University of Leuven and the Tilburg University in the Netherlands.
Dutch and German officials are much quicker than Belgium to challenge unions, he added.
“Roadblocks are unlawful, but in practice there are few [held accountable],” Mr. Blanpain said, referring to Belgian authorities. “Because who does one have to subpoena? Unions. And who does one have to coexist with? Unions.”
Rogue strikes
Underscoring how easily Belgian unions can stage demonstrations, Mr. Goblet said even he couldn’t control rank-and-file union members who stage illegal labor actions such as blocking highways.
“You have thousands of workers who are protesting, and some of them are in particularly difficult situations,” he said. “We can’t keep a watch on every person. But we call on everyone to respect the rules.”
But Belgian officials said that argument was disingenuous. Unions often stage demonstrations and work actions even before requesting changes through formal channels.
“You simply can’t say that strikes are being used as an ultimate resort,” said Mr. Lachaert, whose party is a member of Mr. Michel’s governing coalition. “Often the first thing people do is strike, even before there’s been any negotiations.”
The country’s three biggest trade unions have reluctantly agreed to update a 2002 informal agreement around strike rules and regulations. Under the accord the unions promised not to use violence or impede workers crossing picket lines, while employers would refrain from resorting to police or court action to break up strikes.
Both sides have been violating the agreement, but they have yet to propose specific changes.
Bpost, the postal service in which the government is a majority owner, went to court recently to break up picketers after a small group of workers blocked sorting centers in three cities over plans to ax Saturday bonuses.
“The impact was such that the future of the company was at stake,” said Bpost spokesperson Barbara Van Speybroeck. “The competition in this industry is fierce. We need to convince our clients not to switch to our competitors. When something like this happens, you get very unhappy clients.”
The Paris attacks have not stopped the country’s labor strife.
Transport workers in Charleroi staged a 24-hour strike Nov. 23, again in protest against government austerity cuts, severely restricting subway, bus and train service in the city. The strikes went forward even though the country remained on its highest terror alert level and though lockdown measures were still in place in Brussels and much of its surrounding suburbs.
The changing relationship between the unions, companies and politicians reflects a wider cultural shift in public perspectives. A growing number of Belgians now believe that the unions’ right to strike is infringing on their right to work.
Frederik De Brant, a copywriter, expressed that view in a widely discussed column that ran in the Flemish daily De Morgen in December as 120,000 disgruntled workers went off the job demanding for higher wages and preserving benefits. In it he explained why he wasn’t also striking.
“I’m all for a national demonstration and a strike as long as it’s not used too often. If you constantly have strikes, they lose their effect because no one takes them seriously,” he said in an interview. “But when trains don’t go out for the umpteenth time, people that do want to go to work begin losing their patience.”
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