On Monday, the liberal trade union, the CGSLB, will lead awareness-raising for the use of “soft mobility” in several congested areas within the three regions of the country.
It announced this on Friday. The watchwords of such gatherings will be “All together in traffic jams - not something we dream of.”
The inter-professional agreement (“AIP”), concluded by the Group of Ten last January, includes a part on societal challenges, including transport. The liberal trade union advances, “For trade unions and employers, the budget generated by savings produced by giving up the company car...should encourage the purchase of a bicycle or public transport season tickets.” That having been said, the federal government intends to substitute, if desired by both the employer and employee, company cars with a cash sum.
The trade union laments, “Briefly, this provides a new form of extra-legal advantage without any environmental or transport benefit. It is, at the very least, strange in a country which is currently collapsing in bottlenecks and excess CO2 emissions...”
To raise driver-awareness upon this societal issue, the CGSLB will distribute handouts on Monday in six cities (Charleroi, Liège, Brussels, Ghent, Antwerp and Roeselare), and will also spearhead an online campaign.
The trade union hopes to make regional governments aware that the current proposal by the federal government is “not enough”, since it does not undertake to make any commitments in respect of the environment or transport. The organisation concludes, “The CGSLB is requesting that the regional governments take full account of the ideas and proposals, as regards worker mobility.”
The Brussels Times
