Cleaning assistants who cannot or dare not protest and consultants who go over the line to get bonuses: the stories about fraud in the service voucher sector are not pretty.
ACC Dienstencheques, a subsidiary of Domestic Services that employs 700 cleaning assistants, is suspected of large-scale fraud with temporary unemployment, Het Nieuwsblad revealed in the spring of 2023. Knack spoke with Delphine*, an employee who was up close to the fraud at the company. experienced.
‘It was pleasant working at ACC Dienstencheques in the first few years. Until growth suddenly accelerated. Someone was even employed who encouraged colleagues to “color outside the lines as much as possible”.
‘The cleaning assistants usually did not know that they were in violation. They did not know the system and the legislation. It was more annoying for the people in the administration, who were forced to go along with the deception.’ And that went quite far.
‘While this is strictly prohibited, we had offices, doctors’ cabinets, communal parts of apartment buildings and holiday homes cleaned with service vouchers that our director or family members purchased from him. At one point we even sent cleaning helpers to factories. When someone had a work accident there, the owner of that factory was fined – ACC was not affected. Our contracts stated that we only cleaned residential homes and that was apparently sufficient.’
RVA-boats
‘And then there were the bonuses. They went to the fastest growing office every month. To win, you had to increase the number of hours worked by the cleaning assistants as much as possible, for example by reporting as few sick hours as possible. Our regional manager urged us to destroy sick notes. A cleaning assistant who dropped a medical certificate in the mailbox? We didn’t get it. The cleaning helper was then unlawfully absent and therefore did not receive any wages. Cleaning assistants are not strong enough to do anything about this. They often do not know their rights and barely understand what is stated on their pay slip, because they speak little or no Dutch.
‘Some colleagues, who often received the bonus, had found an “interesting arrangement”: fictitious achievements. People provided us with service vouchers for cleaning hours that were allegedly performed by relatives of the managers and office managers. ACC collected the government subsidy.’
Knack was able to view fragments of the criminal file against ACC manager Johan Goossens. There is talk of a hairdresser who was fictitiously registered as a cleaning assistant with ACC and was thus able to perform her hairdressing activity as a secondary profession, meaning she had to pay fewer social security contributions. Sometimes, according to Delphine, there were also fake employees who were only employed for a very short time, but then full-time with one customer. This fictitious registration was probably a way to acquire the right to sickness and unemployment benefits. ‘It always amazed me that the company could get away with that. However, we came on the radar of trade unions and RVA more often, and in the long run we had to defend a lot of files. We received some RVA fines, but they apparently did not outweigh the proceeds of the fraud.’
“These fictitious performances, just like the fraud with temporary unemployment, are in black and white in the social inspection report on ACC,” says Ben Debognies, employee of the study department of ACV Nutrition and Services.
Some colleagues, who often received the bonus, had found an “interesting arrangement”: fictitious achievements.
Messing around with data
One of the most frequent problems in the sector is the abuse of the ‘authorized absence’ system. Issam Benali from ABVV Dienstencheques explains how this happens. ‘Imagine: a customer’s cleaning service is cancelled. The employer does not receive a subsidy for hours not worked. Instead of continuing to pay the domestic worker – which is mandatory – the employer says: “I am putting you on authorized absence”, and he has the domestic worker confirm this with a signature. But “authorized absence” is actually leave without pay, and that obviously has an impact on income.’
‘If a customer has canceled in time, you can also request temporary unemployment. However, that is not possible for half a day. It is therefore not an option if a customer is absent in the morning, while the cleaning can continue in the afternoon. And then companies use the authorized absences,” Benali said. ‘That also happened at ACC’, says Ann Deheegher (ABVV). ‘And at a well-known cleaning company they even have pre-printed forms for this.’ Ben Debognies (ACV) confirms that the abuse of permitted absences is common in the sector. ‘Cleaning assistants at major players are also being pressured to agree to this.’
ACC dealt especially creatively with temporary unemployment. “If a customer disappeared, the cleaning help was never paid for those hours,” says Delphine. ‘They messed with data and two half days were “merged” into one day of unemployment. That is social security fraud. But I hear from former colleagues who now work elsewhere that it is a widespread practice.’
Corona
In the corona wave of January 2022, ACC management decided to wrongly put all employees who had been legitimately ill during that month on ‘temporary unemployment due to force majeure’. This way the company did not have to pay their guaranteed wages. Both the ACV and the ABVV confirm that they witnessed these practices in several Domestic offices, and that there was therefore clearly a pattern.
Knack was able to view an internal email that an ACC administrative employee sent to a domestic helper on February 3, 2022. She refers to the management’s decision to convert the sick days from January 2022 into temporary unemployment for all employees in the 78 offices of Domestic Services. ‘I want to make it clear that I do not support this!’ she writes in that email. “But the scheme was also applied to the consultants that month, who were all too aware that they were losing money,” says Delphine. ‘They didn’t accept that, and that’s how the ball started rolling.’
*Delphine is an alias
ACC responds
When asked for a response, Johan Goossens, managing director of ACC Dienstencheques, emailed that his company recently appeared before the Recognition Committee and explained its position there. “It would not be respectful to this Commission to release those explanations in the press,” Goossens writes. ‘ACC Service Checks disputes any irregularities or infringements of any regulations. (…) The government’s interpretation of some regulatory provisions differs from our interpretation. There is nothing wrong with that.’ If necessary, the court must decide which interpretation is the correct one, according to Goossens. He also believes that the investigation by the Flemish Social Inspectorate was not ‘contradictory’: ‘It does not pass the test of reliability and impartiality.’ Finally, he also refers to difficulties in the sector and the price increases of some peers. ACC tries to avoid that and that is why the company ‘cannot grant additional benefits to employees even if it would like to do so’.
2024-01-02 17:31:02
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