Understanding Bismarck’s legacy: The role of work history in Belgian social security law
| Date | 01 December 2019 |
| Author | Jakob Werbrouck |
| DOI | 10.1177/1388262719895325 |
| Published date | 01 December 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Understanding Bismarck’s
legacy: The role of work history
in Belgian social security law
Jakob Werbrouck
Institute for Social Law, Belgium
Abstract
This article examines the role that work history plays in income replacement social security
benefits in Belgium. The central premise is that, due to the Bismarckian origins of Belgian social
security, work history is a concept that is structurally at the core of this system. However, the fact
that this element is, from a legal perspective, considered to be self-evident and a prerequisite for
the functioning of social security, should not preclude us from exploring its contingent nature. The
article argues that the way in which work history is expressed in the laws governing different social
security benefits can sometimes create or perpetuate a certain state of affairs, based on an
underlying value judgement. In this sense, work history supersedes the mere technical or neutral
character that can be attributed to it, and in fact functions as an implicit or explicit policy tool to
help model social security in a particular way
Keywords
Theory of social security systems, Bismarck, social security legislation as a policy tool
Introduction
This article attempts to examine the role that work history plays in income replacement social
security benefits in Belgium.
1
As the term itself implies, ‘work history’ refers to an individual’s
Corresponding author:
Jakob Werbrouck, PhD, Institute for Social Law, Blijde-Inkomststraat 19, 3000 KU Leuven, Belgium.
E-mail: jakob.werbrouck@kuleuven.be
1. Note that with ‘social security’ only those benefits are implied that can traditionally be classified as being such, i.e.
social insurance benefits, to the exclusion of social assistance benefits. This is not to say that work history does not play a
role in social assistance benefits. Quite the contrary. However, the constraints in length of this article have forced me to
make such a choice, and to concentrate on developing my central thesis instead of focusing on completeness. As a result,
three income replacing social insurance benefits will be studied: pensions, sickness and invalidity benefits, and
unemployment benefits.
European Journal of Social Security
2019, Vol. 21(4) 326–350
ªThe Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/1388262719895325
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professional past. Within the framework of social security legislation, it signifies all the legal
effects that may follow from having worked before. It concerns all the situations where an
individual’s eligibility for social security benefits is affected by the extent to which he or she has
worked, as well as all the situations where the level or other aspects of the benefit in question are
affected. In essence, work history is the link between an individual’s professional past and his or
her current social security rights, which determines when and to what extent this past is relevant as
far as social security benefits are concerned. It is important to note that, as the laws governing
social protection in Belgium form a rather heterogenous collection, with each law having its own
specific genesis and underlying logic, work history is adapted to fit the specific legal context in
which it is used. For example, while the eligibility for certain benefits, such as pensions, rests on
provision of a record of past employment, other benefits, such as those accorded to individuals
whose disability prevents normal participation in the labour market,
2
are only awarded when the
opposite record has been established. It follows that an individual’s work history can produce
opposite legal effects depending on which social security benefit is applied for.
The relevance of investigating th e concept of work history lies in its essential role in the
operation of the Belgian social security system. The idea that social security must be ‘earned’ is
as much a self-evident premise of the legal framework for social security as is the categorial
differentiation in the benefit and financing structure between employees, self-employed persons,
and civil servants. However, the mere fact that an element is considered as a prerequisite for the
functioning of a system does not preclude us from exploring the contingent nature of such an
element. Even though a number of political, economic, and legal factors, for example, contribute to
the continuation of the status quo, the seemingly axiomatic difference in pension regimes between
the three professional categories has been found to be discriminatory when studied more closely.
3
In the same way, we can ask ourselves if the manner in which the concept of work history is
expressed in the laws governing different social security benefits creates or perpetuates a certain
state of affairs, based on an unstated value judgment.
In examining the concept of work history, it follows that this article has a double objective. The
first objective is to establish what the functional role of work history is within the current context of
Belgian social security law. It will be argued that the concept of ‘work history’ has two distinct
dimensions. On the one hand, it is used to set a quantitative threshold that needs to be passed for an
individual to be admitted into the circle of institutionalised solidarity that social security repre-
sents. On the other hand, it can also be interpreted in a qualitative way that focuses instead on the
individual characteristics of the benefit seeker or his or her profession in order to produce legal
effects vis-a-vis social security entitlements. The second objective is to analyse the contingent
manner in which this functional role is materialised by uncovering the value judgments that have
shaped the concept over time. The central thesis of this article is that the two different dimensions
of work history have been explicitly or implicitly informed by specific societal visions or policy
objectives, which are either unclear or have gone unquestioned and that this can, in both instances,
be problematic from the viewpoint of equality and transparency.
In order however to fully grasp the meaning of work history for the Belgian social security
system, it is necessary first understand the historical context in which the social security system
was created.
2. The so-called IVT or Inkomensvervangende Tegemoetkoming [Income Replacing Compensation].
3. See FLOHIMONT (2012: 421).
Werbrouck 327
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