The government validated this Wednesday morning a bill to adapt the opening hours of businesses, “taking into account the new purchasing habits of consumers” and “the high number of exemptions from requested opening hours”. Concretely, the text, which must still go through the entire legislative process before possibly coming into force, provides that businesses will be able to open from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. on weekdays, from 5 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Saturdays, Sundays, public holidays and public holidays. holidays. Except June 22, December 24 and 31, when employees will be able to close shop at 6 p.m.
The report from the Government Council specifies that this adaptation “is not an obligation imposed” on traders, but a possibility of “being able to adapt to the preferences of their customers and their employees”. For this, the text “requires the conclusion of a collective agreement between employers and employee representatives” to go beyond the scheduled hours.
If collective agreements are necessary, the negotiations risk being sporty. A few minutes after the government, the OGBL and LCGB unions released a joint press release to denounce “a new government attack” against “employees and their families”. They see it as “by far the most liberal opening hours regime in the entire Greater Region”.
For the unions, after the planned extension of Sunday work, “this extreme expansion of opening hours and working hours constitutes a major social regression, since it will destroy all family or private life for the 50,000 employees concerned “. The OGBL and the LCGB also say that these reforms “are in flagrant contradiction with the study carried out by LISER” on behalf of the Ministry of Middle Classes, on the impact of such liberalization. LISER concluded that “the overwhelming majority of retail employees prefer not to work at all on Sundays, nor late in the evening, and that this has harmful consequences for the health and well-being of the people concerned”, recall the unions.
They also point out that the sector has a “high proportion of women, many of whom are single parents, and depends on cross-border labor”. As a result, “this ultra-liberalization of working hours will aggravate the already existing phenomena of staff shortages and will certainly not increase the attractiveness of these professions”. On public holidays, OGBL and LCGB see a “disastrous” project, which would make employees work “eight public holidays”. Above all, “creating two categories of public holidays for businesses could constitute a first step towards a generalized increase in working hours in all sectors”.
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