Shoe chain is first to give green light to night shift

Shoe chain Schoenen Torfs has become the first company in the country to reach an agreement with unions on night work since the introduction of new rules last month. The agreement covers overnight hours in the chain’s warehouses, where workers will prepare and dispatch online orders. The plan is to deliver orders made online by 22.00 the next day.

According to the agreement – which has still to be signed – warehouse workers will finish work at 23.00, three hours later than they do now. Those late hours will be paid at a bonus rate of 25% higher than the basic rate. “Only those who want to work later will do so,” said CEO Wouter Torfs.

In the past, work between the hours of 20.00 and 6.00 was forbidden except in restricted cases, including in hotels, health care, bakeries and agriculture. Only workers over 18 could work at night, and all night work had to be the subject of a collective agreement.

The rules were slightly looser for the logistics sector, allowing deliveries from warehouses to supermarkets within the same chain to be prepared in the evening. For orders placed online to smaller retailers, a company-level agreement was required. Torfs is the first to reach such an agreement.

The more flexible rules were introduced by federal work minister Kris Peeters because Belgium’s regulations on night work were so out of date that foreign webshops like Amazon and Bol.com swallowed up a huge share of the online market.

According to some analysts, the measures are too little too late, as customers have become accustomed to shopping online and have developed their preferences, often for international sellers who ship from warehouses overseas.

Photo courtesy Torfs