According to the CSC, more and more dismissals are disguised as amicable terminations of contracts. Thus, the employer avoids paying compensation, but this has consequences for the worker who then loses his right to unemployment benefits for a variable period.
The CSC, the Confederation of Christian Unions, notes an increase in terminations of employment contracts by mutual agreement. According to the union, these are often disguised dismissals to avoid the employer having to pay compensation.
Problem is, by signing this termination, the worker therefore renounces his termination compensation, but also his right to unemployment. Indeed, to be entitled to unemployment benefits, you must have lost your job involuntarily. An employee of a service voucher company paid the price. “She was accused by a client of stealing an envelope with money from her house. She always disputed the facts“, says Fanny Rentmeesters, social support worker in Walloon Brabant. “Her management immediately wanted to protect the client, and threatened her with dismissal for serious misconduct. She was under pressure, she was afraid that the serious misconduct would be noted in her file and that she would have difficulty finding a job afterwards. She therefore agreed to sign a termination by mutual agreement, and she received a sanction from the ONEM (National Employment Office) of approximately three months.“.
“ONEM detects that there has been a job abandonment. People are lost, when they read this, they don’t understand, this is not what they experienced“, deplores Fanny Rentmeesters.
-The ex-worker will have to explain his loss of employment to the ONEM and risks a sanction ranging from 4 to 52 weeks without benefits. “We see that there are more and more of them and these ruptures by mutual agreement in the company are in fact a trap for the workers who then find themselves facing the ONEM which sanctions them. They therefore end up with 0€ when leaving the company. In the best of all worlds, the employer should be able to warn and prevent consequences by signing these documents“, suggests Ruhi Tuloglu, union representative in a large chain of stores.
“The employer has already decided on a package of offers that he is going to make to his worker and which is sometimes derisory and will trap the worker who is not informed, in a meeting to discuss the conditions of his departure. This creates an emotional state of stress in the worker who then negotiates very poorly. It must be done in a healthy and balanced way. Termination by mutual agreement assumes that everyone agrees. It’s up to everyone to be well aware of their interests and negotiate a solution that suits them“, adds Bruno-Henri Vincent, lawyer specializing in labor law.
The CSC advises never to sign an amicable termination of contract without being accompanied.
CSC dismissal joint agreement compensation
