Green party Groen has condemned the lack of action by the Flemish Social Inspectorate on discrimination in the labour market. The agency investigates around six cases a month on average. According to Groen, it hardly employs any people to deal with the issue, meaning “a lot of discrimination remains under the radar”.

There are a lot of problems of discrimination in the labour market, especially in the sectors – subsidised by Flanders – of service vouchers for domestic help, temporary work and employment agencies. 

Sector federation Federgon recognises this, and it was recently confirmed in a test by the VRT programme Factcheckers, in which 70 per cent of service voucher companies didn’t turn down discriminatory requests from clients.

“For companies that run largely on taxpayers’ money, you should at least expect them to abide by the law”

In total, the inspectorate has looked into 374 discrimination cases over the past five years, or about six per month. In 81 cases, just over 20 per cent, action was taken – almost always a warning. 

Promise of improvement

Groen MP Eva Platteau believes that the responsible minister, Zuhal Demir of N-VA, urgently needs to step up the efforts. 

“Those who discriminate are breaking the law,” she told De Standaard. “For companies that run largely on taxpayers’ money, you should at least expect them to abide by the law. But the Flemish government barely checks them, let alone follows up on violations.” 

Only 1.3 full-time equivalents are currently monitoring discrimination. Demir recently gave the green light to hire 30 extra inspectors, but they would be deployed primarily to combat other issues, such as subsidy abuses.

Demir acknowledged in the newspaper that the figures were low, but promised improvement. 

“The Flemish Social Inspectorate now knows where the problems are, so these checks can now be more targeted,” she said. Field tests, in which fictitious applications are used to check discriminatory practices, will be used as well.