Flanders announces mandatory community service for long-term unemployed

Flanders will be implementing mandatory community service for the long-term unemployed beginning in 2023, in what the government says is an effort to help jobseekers “retain social skills”.

The measure will be for anyone receiving unemployment benefits who has been without a job for more than two years, which in Flanders is around 70,000 people, according to VRT.

Community service could mean being support staff at public events or vaccination centres, landscaping public gardens or volunteering in schools.

The plan was previously included in the Flemish coalition agreement and Flemish employment minister Hilde Crevits is pushing ahead with the measure, which has led to heated discussions over the past 10 years. 

“People who have been unemployed for more than two years lose a number of competencies that are necessary for a job, for example social skills - how do I behave at work?” Crevits explained.

“We want to meet that by letting them do community service. In this way, they maintain social contacts and continue to be trained in social skills. It should therefore have a competence-building effect.”

Under the system being proposed, a maximum of 64 hours per month of community service would be established. The unemployed would continue to receive their unemployment benefits, along with an hourly wage of €1.30 for each community service hour worked.

“It is also limited in time, because we want to avoid people staying in it forever,” said Crevits. “But we do want to avoid people who have been jobseekers for two years remaining in that inactivity and thus becoming even more distant from the labour market.”

There are exemptions, including those with a long-term illness and people whose job search would be hindered by community service. 

Details still need to be worked out, including a consultation with local authorities and social partners, some of whom said they wanted to “first look at the impact of the measure” and evaluate organisational challenges and financial costs.

Critics, including the socialist trade union ABVV, are wary of the compulsory nature of the community service and say that the requirement would cut into time many unemployed people need for special support. 

“There are many vulnerable people in this group of long-term unemployed who need a lot of tailored support,” said Caroline Copers, general secretary of the Flemish ABVV. “This obligation will not allow you to offer them that support.” 

Copers said it would be more productive to focus on employers: “They complain about the shortage in the labour market and are therefore best placed to help the long-term unemployed find a job.”

Ides Nicaise, a professor at KU Leuven, said the entire principle is flawed. “If it were voluntary community service, that would be completely different,” said Nicaise. “But this goes against the principle of the right to work and therefore the right to free choice of work. Legally, this is already very flawed."

Explaining similar systems abroad, Nicaise said that such programmes are unable to offer quality labour when scaled to such a large size: “You get all kinds of forms of forced labour to keep people busy. If people think it's pointless or doesn't suit them, they are sanctioned. That eventually turns into a suspension machine.”

Nicaise also said there was a chance that such a programme would discourage the unemployed from continuing their job search. 

“It also stigmatises job seekers. Employers will turn away from those candidates because they think they would no longer be motivated and they have been forced to do so.”

Photo: Benoit Doppagne/Belga