Labor effects of corporate groups in Belgium

AutorMathias Wouters
CargoPhd Candidate, University of Leuven
Páginas7-16
IUSLabor 3/2017
7
LABOR EFFECTS OF CORPORATE GROUPS IN BELGIUM
Mathias Wouters
Phd Candidate, University of Leuven
Introduction
The Belgian legal order tends to hold every individual company accountable as a
separate legal entity and maintains that a corporate group has no legal personality as
such. Notwithstanding power relations present between companies in a group,
regulations are often not amended to take these changed circumstances into account.
Specific labor law provisions concerned with corporate groups are scarce and mainly try
to preserve social dialogue in more complex corporate structures. This lack of
regulation prompts judges to extend existing doctrines. Most notably, the doctrine of co-
employment is used to hold companies jointly liable in certain instances.
1. Is there a definition of corporate group or group of companies in your labor
legal system?
Belgian labor law does not contain a general definition of corporate groups.1 Only
certain specific regulatory instruments refer to the concept of which two stand out.
These illustrate that no uniformity exists.
The first reference concerns the possibility for some individual companies to ease their
duty to employ a certain quota of young workers because of the total amount of young
workers employed in the group.2 To that end the King, after the necessary debate in the
Council of Ministers, can determine the meaning of a ‘groupe d’employeurs’. The King
therefore specified that a ‘groupe d’employeurs’ presupposes multiple legal entities that
fulfill the socio-economic conditions of ‘article 14, §2 b) de la loi du 20 septembre 1948
portant organisation de l’économie’ and thus form a technical corporate unit, i.e. ‘unité
1 PEETERS, J. “De notie ‘groep’ in het Belgisch (collectief) arbeidsrecht” in VANMEENEN, M. and VAN
HOE, A. (eds.), De vennootschapsgroep in de gr eep van het recht, Antwerpen, Intersentia, 2013, p. 127.
2 Article 41 loi 24 decembre 1999 en vue de la promotion d e l’ emploi, BS 27 janvier 2000,
http://www.ejustice.just.fgov.be/cgi_loi/change_lg.pl?language=fr&la=F&cn=1999122443&table_name=
loi.

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