In Belgium, we have an indexed salary system, partly linked to inflation and other factors.
It's a complex system, conditioned by many variables (like just about everything else in this country renowned for its Belgian-style compromises).
It is also frozen for some years, especially when the financial lobby succeeds in manipulating politicians.
It's a constant battle, highly classified by category, called Commission paritaire (CP). For example, for the coming year, the CP200 will obtain an indexation of all salaries of 3.6%, which doesn't mean you can't ask for a pay rise, although some employees take advantage of the vagueness created to put their employees on the fixed scale (and fabricate nonsense in their employment contracts, indexation is not an increase).
It should also be noted that when you change jobs, you can both pass on your experience in the same CP, but if you change jobs (unless you negotiate hard), you fall back to zero experience (or the experience you already have in that CP).
It's almost become a survival mechanism for the lower and low-middle classes of the population. It's a system that the right-wing parties, currently in the majority in this country, are keen to reform, and it's not going down well (which explains, in part, why we can't seem to form governments quickly). They're using every trick in the book to discourage the people from giving up the advantages painstakingly acquired through centuries of unfortunate industrialization, which have benefited from including external countries.
It's a constant battle, highly classified by category, called Commission paritaire (CP). For example, for the coming year, the CP200 will obtain an indexation of all salaries of 3.6%, which doesn't mean you can't ask for a pay rise, although some employees take advantage of the vagueness created to put their employees on the fixed scale (and fabricate nonsense in their employment contracts, indexation is not an increase).
It should also be noted that when you change jobs, you can both pass on your experience in the same CP, but if you change jobs (unless you negotiate hard), you fall back to zero experience (or the experience you already have in that CP).
It's almost become a survival mechanism for the lower and low-middle classes of the population. It's a system that the right-wing parties, currently in the majority in this country, are keen to reform, and it's not going down well (which explains, in part, why we can't seem to form governments quickly). They're using every trick in the book to discourage the people from giving up the advantages painstakingly acquired through centuries of unfortunate industrialization, which have benefited from including external countries.
The index system will soon be celebrating its 105th anniversary. It's a vector of social peace and proof that, when properly implemented, it has no effect on hyperinflation: https://www.cgslb.be/sites/default/files/aclvb/Documenten/Ar...