Thousands of jobs created by e-commerce agreement

The Belgian government has decided to sanction night work in e-commerce. There is a framework agreement with general agreements within the distribution industry, which can be elaborated upon per business. Member of Parliament Werner Janssen is satisfied: "Instead of destroying jobs, we give our e-commerce businesses the chance to create extra jobs, mainly for low-skilled workers."

Last year, the Belgian e-commerce industry missed out on 8,000 jobs and  2.4 billion euros of turnover due to all sorts of impediments, such as the prohibition of night work. Many e-commerce businesses have moved to neighbouring countries which have more flexible legislation. Therefore, the N-VA found it essential to enable night work in e-commerce.

However, there still is a catch: a unanimous agreement must still be reached at the company level. "The government must certainly continue to follow this up," Janssen concludes, "because it concerns hundreds of jobs which can be achieved at a record speed. We may succeed in drawing some jobs that have already been moved abroad, back."