Flanders Voucher Price Rise Threatens 23,000 Care Jobs

The federation representing Belgium’s service voucher (dienstencheques) sector warned on Wednesday that a planned price increase could trigger the biggest wave of layoffs in years, comparing the fallout to the 2012 closure of the Ford Genk car plant. Domiva, the sector’s umbrella body, says up to 23,000 jobs are at risk if the price of a voucher rises from €10 to €12 as part of the Flemish government’s budget package, VRT NWS reported.

“Compare it with the closure of Ford Genk: you will see the largest round of layoffs in a long time,” said Steve Vandenberghe, Domiva’s general director, speaking on the VRT Radio 2 consumer programme WinWin. “They are driving an important sector into ruin.”

A System Built to Fight Undeclared Work

The service voucher system was designed with a clear purpose, Vandenberghe argued in the same interview: to keep household work above board rather than in the informal economy. “That cannot be the intention. Precisely to counter that, the system was introduced. Now they are hollowing it out completely,” he said, warning that a fresh price rise would push more families to clean for themselves or pay workers cash-in-hand.

Households buy the vouchers at a subsidised price and use them to pay registered home helpers for cleaning, ironing, grocery shopping and small domestic tasks. Since the sixth state reform, the system has been regionalised, becoming a competence of Flanders, Brussels and Wallonia from 1 January 2016. At least 140,000 people work legally in the sector nationally, and the Christian trade union ACV estimates roughly 90,000 home helpers in Flanders alone.

Crucially, the customer’s €10 covers only part of the true cost. The real value of a voucher, once government subsidies are included, is about €23.36 — a figure that has fuelled criticism that the system is heavily subsidised.

The Price Rise at the Centre of the Storm

Under the budget agreement taking shape in the Flemish government, the voucher price would climb from €10 to €12, with buyers of more than 175 vouchers a year paying €13 from the 176th voucher onward, according to leaked details reported by VRT NWS.

Domiva’s 23,000-job estimate draws on an earlier study by the consultancy IDEA, which modelled the effect of a €2 increase for Wallonia. The study projected a loss of between 16.5 million and 24 million work hours — equivalent to 16,500 to 24,000 home helpers, based on 1,000 work hours per helper per year.

Vandenberghe argues the sector is already bleeding jobs. “In 2025, 6,100 jobs had already disappeared. 45,000 people dropped out. And in 2026, even before the Flemish government’s decision, another 3,500 jobs have disappeared,” he said. He fears one in five companies in the sector will not survive.

The Ford Genk Comparison

The Ford Genk reference is deliberate and emotionally charged. When management announced the plant’s closure on 24 October 2012, the last car rolled off the line in December 2014, costing nearly 4,300 blue- and white-collar jobs at Ford itself and a further 1,305 at its four main suppliers, VRT NWS recalled in a 2022 retrospective. Some estimates put the wider toll nearer 10,000 jobs.

The comparison is rhetorically powerful but imperfect. Ford Genk was an export manufacturer hit by global restructuring; the voucher sector is a labour-intensive, subsidised services industry whose troubles would stem directly from government pricing policy. Domiva’s figures also come from a modelled study, not observed layoffs.

Home Helpers Describe a Sector Under Strain

The warning follows a series of testimonials from home helpers themselves. On Monday, VRT NWS published accounts from four workers who described mounting pressure.

“I fear a bloodbath in our sector,” said Patricia De Beule, 55, who has worked 18 years in the sector and is also a city councillor in Ghent. Kimberley Bauwens, 33, said the workload from an earlier price rise had already pushed colleagues to skip breaks: “That pressure will lead to more incapacity and burnouts.”

Julien De Rijck, 63, noted that the price had risen from €9 to €12 in little more than a year. “The customer base is simply smaller than before,” he said, adding that his own working week had shrunk from 38 hours to between 33 and 35.

Union data appear to back those accounts. An ACV Voeding en Diensten survey of 1,377 home helpers published in April found that 80% had noticed changed customer behaviour after earlier price rises. Nearly half had lost customers, 45% saw their working volume fall, and one in eight suffered a serious drop in income. More than half reported a heavier workload.

“The price increases must not be paid for by the workers,” the union said, with national secretary Kris Vanautgaerden warning: “Without respect, better workability and better wages, the future of the service voucher sector is at stake.”

A Debate That Cuts Both Ways

The argument is not one-sided. Some economists see a price rise as overdue, given the scale of public subsidy. Professor Ive Marx of UAntwerpen has called an increase “perfectly logical.” From the government’s perspective, the voucher rise is one line in a package designed to reach budget balance by 2029, requiring roughly €3 billion in savings and reforms — more than €1.2 billion of it from spending cuts.

Others — including several home helpers — argue for income-linked pricing, under which higher earners would pay more. There is also a cautionary precedent: after the price rose from €9 to €10 in early 2025, an analysis by De Tijd found more than 40% fewer vouchers were bought in the first half of that year compared with 2024.

What to Watch

Minister-President Matthias Diependaele is expected to deliver his postponed September Declaration on Wednesday afternoon, when the full budget agreement will finally be laid before the Flemish Parliament. Until then, the €10-to-€12 increase remains part of a package that, in the government’s own mantra, is not agreed until everything is agreed.

For the sector, the coming weeks will determine whether Domiva’s Ford Genk warning proves prophetic — or whether it becomes a negotiating position rather than a forecast. What is clear is that a system designed to formalise work and protect low-skilled jobs now finds its future tied to a budget decision that its defenders say could do the opposite.