Can an alliance between SMEs and unions secure Charleroi’s economic future?

Sébastien Croegaert

Place

Charleroi

Walloon city at the centre of the proposed economic alliance.

Why it matters

Walloon city at the centre of the proposed economic alliance.

About

Charleroi is a city and a municipality of Wallonia, located in the province of Hainaut, Belgium. It is the largest city in both Hainaut and Wallonia. The city is situated in the valley of the Sambre, in the south-west of Belgium, not far from the border with France. By 1 January 2008, the total population of Charleroi was 201,593.

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Organisation

Statbel

Belgium’s statistical office and source for employment, enterprise and vacancy figures.

Why it matters

Belgium’s statistical office and source for employment, enterprise and vacancy figures.

About

Statistics Belgium is part of the Federal Public Service Economy, SMEs, Self-Employed and Energy. Its legal Dutch name is Algemene Directie Statistiek, and its legal French name is Direction générale Statistique.

Official site ↗View source record ↗

Croegaert, who also runs the printing company Printbox, presents the initiative as an attempt to move beyond habitual mistrust between employers and organised labour. His argument is that locally controlled companies share more interests with their employees than conventional confrontations suggest: they depend on the same skills base, transport links and public services, and their investment decisions usually remain tied to the region. He also distinguishes between SMEs and multinational groups, noting that a small employer has less room to absorb a prolonged dispute, an abrupt cost increase or the loss of a skilled employee.

That distinction is economically relevant, but it does not erase conflicts over wages, schedules, safety or restructuring. A cooperative model would need to specify what workers receive in return for greater flexibility or restraint. Without enforceable commitments on job quality, training and consultation, an alliance could remain an attractive slogan rather than a durable social bargain. Neither the FGTB Charleroi–Sud Hainaut nor the CSC has been shown in the available reporting to have accepted Croegaert’s proposal, and their formal positions should not be inferred from his intervention.

The timing is pointed. At Thy-Marcinelle, unions negotiated for 16 hours over the social plan affecting up to 167 workers in the steelworks’ hot phase, according to La DH. The FGTB and CSC said the final proposal doubled the initially offered supplementary compensation, but the episode still ended with the prospect of redundancies and only about 220 full-time jobs remaining at the cold-phase operation. It illustrated both the value and the limits of social dialogue: negotiation improved the exit terms, yet it could not preserve the industrial activity concerned.

Charleroi’s economy is now much broader than the heavy-industry image that still follows the city. The Walloon mobility administration’s metropolitan plan recorded 4,806 businesses in the municipality in 2020 and classified 85.6% of local economic activity as tertiary. Across the wider planning area, services represented roughly 77% of enterprises and secondary activities 21%. Those figures describe a service-led economy that nevertheless retains important industrial, engineering, aerospace, logistics and construction capabilities.

New investment provides a more optimistic counterweight to industrial job losses. RTBF reported that €86 million in European support was allocated to the expansion of the A6K/E6K technology and training hub, whose stated objective is to increase annual learner capacity from 1,000 to 10,000 from the 2026 academic year. The Walloon government has also selected a €50 million aircraft-dismantling project involving Sabena Engineering and the Comet group near Charleroi airport, with projections of about 100 direct jobs. These are promising sectoral building blocks, although official forecasts should not be treated as jobs already created.

The harder question is whether local residents can reach and qualify for those opportunities. Statbel put Wallonia’s employment rate for people aged 20 to 64 at 67.1% in 2024, compared with 76.9% in Flanders and 72.3% nationally. Meanwhile, the federal statistical office found that small Belgian businesses had a 6.42% vacancy rate in the final quarter of 2024, against 3.80% for medium-sized and large firms. The comparison suggests that the problem is not simply a shortage of jobs or candidates, but a persistent mismatch involving qualifications, working conditions, mobility and recruitment capacity.

This is where Croegaert’s proposition could become practical. SMEs could identify shared training needs instead of trying to solve them company by company; unions could help shape programmes that lead to recognised qualifications and sustainable employment; and public bodies could link subsidies more clearly to hiring, retention and skills transfer. Charleroi’s A6K/E6K ecosystem offers one possible setting because it places employers and training under the same roof. The Walloon administration says 128 million euros supported investment projects at 1,127 companies in 2025, up from 115 million euros for 1,500 companies in 2024, providing another policy lever if outcomes are measured carefully rather than only announced.

For households, the debate is less abstract than institutional language makes it sound. A functioning agreement could mean a clearer route from training to a stable payslip, more predictable working arrangements and fewer vacancies that companies cannot fill. For a small business, it could reduce recruitment costs and production interruptions. A weak agreement, however, could ask employees to accept flexibility while leaving wages, progression and employment security vague.

Charleroi’s history makes the balance particularly sensitive. Large industrial employers once concentrated investment, employment and union organisation in a limited number of sites. The emerging economy is more fragmented, spread among smaller service and technology companies as well as a reduced number of industrial anchors. That dispersal can make the region more resilient to the collapse of any one employer, but it also makes collective training, worker representation and strategic coordination more difficult.

The next meaningful development would therefore be a response from the FGTB, CSC, sectoral federations and public employment and training bodies such as Le Forem

Organisation

Le Forem

Walloon public employment service that could coordinate recruitment and training.

Why it matters

Walloon public employment service that could coordinate recruitment and training.

About

Het Office wallon de la formation professionnelle et de l’emploi kortweg Forem is sinds 1989 de officiële instantie die instaat voor vorming en begeleiding van werklozen in het Waals Gewest. Forem is de schakel tussen werknemers en werkgevers voor het vinden van de gepaste job of personeel, vooral in de private sector.

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