Aims

The course aims to:
1.introduce students to the general principles of labour law and social security legislation;
2.initiate students in research and interpretation of legal information in labour law and social security legislation;
3.introduce students to the links between social history and legal history in the specific field of social legislation.

Main themes

The course has three main components:
1. Labour law
This part of the course is a systematic presentation of two main issues: work contract law and collective labour law.
-for employment contracts, it examines conclusion, maintenance and breaking of the employment contract, powers of the employer and the worker, remuneration and leave;
-for collective labour law, it investigates collective representation law, negotiations and collective agreements.
2. Social security legislation
This part of the course gives a brief overview of the financing and management institutions, focusing in some detail on the law relating to allocation distribution.
- for the financing and management institutions it examines the structure and role of the Belgian Social Security Office (the ONSS); the concept of employer and worker contributions and the structure and role of the institutions managing the insurance systems (national offices and insurance organisations)
- for the social security systems: introduction to the legal rules of insurability, of granting and fixing the level of allocations in the six social security schemes (accidents at work and sick leave; sickness and invalidity insurance; family benefits; unemployment; pensions; annual holidays). The course will also discuss the issues of the minimum wage and the guaranteed minimum income for elderly people.
3. The link between legal history and economic and social history
The course adopts the perspective that Law can be presented as an institutionalised form of social practices. These institutions are the result of complex political, economic and social processes. In this introduction to labour law and social security legislation, care is taken to underline their place in the political, economic and social history of European societies.

Content and teaching methods

Lecture

Exercises of manipulation of codes and research for diverse sources of legal piece of information are proposed to the students as preparation and as follow-up of the lectures

Other information (prerequisite, evaluation (assessment methods), course materials recommended readings, ...)

Evaluation: The examination may be either oral or written.