Black books social dumping

Details: Created: Thursday, 21 March 2019 12:23

How Belgian companies continue to outsource, thus penalising East European and Belgian drivers.

The Belgian Transport Workers Union (BTB-UBT) was the first and only trade union organisation to join the fight against cabotage. Thanks to BTB-UBT, Belgian companies are no longer allowed to make unlimited use of foreign companies for transport operations within our borders. At the same time, opportunities for the same foreign companies to transport goods in our country are now also subjet to restrictions.

At European and Belgian level, policy-makers have introduced tighter conditions for cabotage. Based on Directive 2009/1072:

Cabotage is only permitted for seven days after an international transport is unloaded.
Only three cabotage operations can be performed during this period.

A lot of Belgian hauliers are outsourcing work to countries where labour is far less expensive than in Belgium. By forming a company in Eastern Europe, a Belgian haulier can easily use East European drivers and equipment in Belgium, when organising its transport operations worldwide and even within Belgium.

This would not pose any problem, if they were real companies setting up business at these locations and conducting transport operations, mainly in order to serve East European markets. Very often, these companies are scarcely more than a (small) agency, with and individual or shared office. In some cases, the company consists only of a letterbox or nameplate hanging at the entrance of a building.

BTB-UBT already executed a numbre of study visits on location, with these black books as a result.

Read the Black book 2012 (pdf)

Read the Black book 2017 (pdf)

Due to a possible name confusion of a transport company the text of the black book social dumping “The road to Slovakia is still busy” (edition 2019) was modified.

Read the Black book 2019 (pdf)

Read the Black book 2021 (pdf)