Regulating zero-hour contracts in Belgium: From a defensive to a (too?) supportive approach

Abstract

The development of on-demand work is one of the recent trends in the organisation of work in industrialised economies. On-demand work is a generic term that includes various work arrangements that ‘involve a continuous employment relationship maintained between an employer and an employee’, but whereby ‘the employer does not continuously provide work for the employee’. Rather, ‘the employer has the option of calling the employee in as and when needed’. This range of work arrangements is meant to meet the flexibility needs of companies that face peaks in work that are irregular and unpredictable. However, there is a risk that employers may misuse this form of work organisation to avoid the application of protective labour law provisions. Moreover, on-demand work raises two major issues regarding the protection of workers. First, the unpredictability of the number of working hours leaves workers in financial insecurity and instability. Second, workers may face difficulties in balancing work with personal life due to the potentially high variability of work schedules. Some on-demand employment contracts indicate the minimum and the maximum number of working hours, but this article focuses on employment relationships in which no minimum number of working hours (and remuneration) is guaranteed: the so-called ‘zero-hours contracts’ (on this notion, see the introduction to this special issue). More precisely, it examines the regulation of zero-hours contracts in Belgium. As in the United Kingdom and unlike the Netherlands, there is no reference in Belgian legislation to the notions of on-demand work or zero-hours contracts. These are not legal terms under