Comment on Belgium's sex workers get maternity leave and pensions under world-first law
RunawayFixer@lemmy.world 4 weeks agoYoung people get “youth vacation days”, but they have to apply for it themselves or they lose the money. It’s a decades old system and imo it’s a disgrace that it’s not automatic, but when I graduated we all knew about it atleast. New workers who arrive from outside Belgium only have a solution since 2 or 3 years ago: “supplementary vacation days”. Before that they had no solution for them and it was up to the employer to invent something (or not), which is why many went without. That change and other recent changes is basically the eu forcing Belgium to be a little less exploitative.
I’m not in HR so I may be off on some points, but this is what I remember from when it was news.
HK65@sopuli.xyz 4 weeks ago
So the thing is that for a recent hire most companies, especially small ones, don’t know about the supplementary days. That makes for an awkward conversation immediately when you start.
The only real source is a government website with no good law citations that says ambiguous shit, and the actual law, available in Dutch or French, but the legal text is very hard since it’s a modification to an older royal decree, so you have to read the two together.
Ask me how I know. Capital of the EU my ass.
RunawayFixer@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Yeah, like the other guy said that’s basically the same experience as most Belgians get with the youth vacation days.
The way that the Belgian state treats it’s income and expenditures is very unfair. People who can’t figure out things (and as you noticed it’s very hard), pay the most taxes of anyone in Europe, while people who earn enough can hire a specialist that tells them how to profit from deductibles, subsidies and fake self employment etc. The tax services routinely issue fines that were deemed illegal multiple times by judges in the past and it’s up to their victims to protest against this. And if there is a new scandal of some kind and it turns out that some fines or tax were illegal, it does not automatically get refunded, but instead the victims have to see the news, get documentation together and then ask for their money back.
But the thing is, if we were not in the eu, then it would probably be worse. I think our scummy politicians is one of the reasons that Belgians are so pro eu. The example I like most is clean rivers and streams, because without the eu those would still be dead, smelly and full of shit.
HK65@sopuli.xyz 4 weeks ago
Are you sure you’re not Eastern European?
RunawayFixer@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
We’re the most southern European country in the north of Europe ;)