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Project

Working time and time off in labour law: a legal research on work-life balance.

Belgian working time law has come into existence against the background of a social context that differs significantly from today’s reality. Working time law originated at the beginning of the 20th century. It was coordinated and laid down in the ’60 and ’70. Since then, many social evolutions took place that challenge working time law. Only few adaptions, however, have been made over the years. Together and partly as a consequence of this, an increasing demand for work-life balance (WLB) has come to the fore. This demand comes both from the trade unions, employees and employers and is reflected in the political discourse at national and European level. The traditional working time law, however, does not really take this demand into account.

This research investigated whether the Belgian working time law can be adapted to contribute to the realisation of WLB and, if so, which recommendations can be made. The central research question was: “Can working time law contribute to a WLB-strategy”. A WLB-strategy is a set of measures intended to enable the individual to realise WLB. The research assumption was that a WLB-strategy is needed. The research hypothesis was that working time law can fit in and contribute to a WLB-strategy without giving up on its own goals and functions. It concerns a legal research. It has a strong doctrinal dimension, but also uses an interdisciplinary perspective, legal history, legal theory and (functional) comparative law.

Belgian working time law was evaluated on the basis of a set of criteria deducted from WLB-literature. This research showed for example that Belgian working time law focuses very much on limiting working time hours, but does less to contribute to other WLB-criteria such as predictability. The employee also has rather little to say on when to work.

Afterwards, recommendations were formulated for which inspirations was sought in the Netherlands, France, UK, Spain, Sweden and Denmark. The recommendations were based on the WLB-criteria, but were tested on their consistency with working time law’s own functions and goals. These functions and goals were formulated by analysing what the historical goals and functions of working time law were, confronted with what modern authors say modern goals and functions of working time law should be. On this basis, seven recommendations were formulated. Belgian working time law should:

-   Include a general right to request to increase or decrease working time or request a new working schedule, after which the employer can deny the request on objective grounds;

-   Introduce a general emergency leave;

-   Introduce the concept of fair scheduling;

-   Take into account the intensity of work;

-   Take into account the porosity of rest periods;

-   Not try to stop the general trend to work time independently, but introduce new ways to fulfill the demarcation function of working time law; and

-   Take into account personal circumstances to protect the free choice of the employee to work or not to work.

Date:15 May 2012 →  19 Dec 2016
Keywords:Arbeidsrecht, arbeidstijd, work-life-balance
Disciplines:Law
Project type:PhD project