Belgium comes to standstill as strikes erupt
BRUSSELS — A national strike in Belgium over pay and working conditions has led to the cancellation of all flights in and out of the country, halted public transport and prompted blockades outside factories, threatening to bring the country to a standstill Wednesday.
The 24-hour strike began at 10 p.m. Tuesday, with Belgium’s three main workers’ unions galvanizing their nearly 4 million members — in a country of about 11 million people — to stop working.
Government workers also joined the strike, prompting a number of public schools, nurseries and sports facilities to close. Prison guards went on strike and were replaced by police officers in most prisons.
“What we want is to tell employers, whoever they are, that we’re sick of them putting all the dough that we create in their pockets. It’s time to give some of it back to the workers,” Robert Verteneuil, president of the General Federation of Belgian Labor, a socialist trade union with about 1.2 million members, said on public radio Wednesday morning.
Workers are protesting slow pay raises, which will be limited to 0.8 percent over the next year, he said, and demanding that the government take action.
In Belgium, limits for pay and working conditions are negotiated by workers’ unions and business groups on an annual basis. The government usually translates those terms into policy and law, though some flexibility remains for individual companies to set their own terms. The socioeconomic model is known as Rhine capitalism and exists in Germany, France and other Northern European countries.
It is not clear if any steps will be taken soon to address the workers’ demands, because the Belgian federal government fell in December when it lost its majority in Parliament after its biggest coalition partner, the right-wing Flemish party, left in opposition to the planned signing of an international agreement on migration.
The country is being led by a caretaker government with a minority in Parliament at least until elections in May.
Prime Minister Charles Michel called for talks between workers and employers to resume Thursday, but he did not indicate what measures his center-right minority government could take to raise wages.
The strike is expected to cost tens of millions of euros to the Belgian economy, and Verteneuil indicated that he would be prepared to organize more strikes before the coming elections if negotiations did not bring the expected results.