What is PC 318? Guide to joint committee 318 in 2026

What is a joint committee?

A joint committee is a Belgian sectoral negotiation body where employers and unions jointly bargain over wages and working conditions. Each joint committee covers a specific economic sector, and the agreements reached there — in so-called collective labour agreements (CLAs) — are legally binding for all employers and employees within that committee.

Belgium has roughly 100 joint committees, numbered from PC 100. Every employer is assigned to one or more committees based on its main activity and NACE code. For employees, this means that minimum wage, holiday rules, notice periods, and sectoral top-ups (such as year-end bonuses or bike allowances) are largely determined by the joint committee, not by the individual employer.

Agreements are ratified by royal decree and published in the Belgian Official Gazette. Anyone wanting to verify which joint committee applies to them can look it up via the Federal Public Service Employment, Labour and Social Dialogue.

PC 318: home help and elderly care services

PC 318 covers the recognised and subsidised home help and elderly care services in Belgium. Concretely, this includes organisations offering home care, family help, maternity care, sitter services, childcare, or support for people with disabilities — always within a recognised, professional structure.

Joint committee 318 has two subcommittees with geographical logic:

• PC 318.01 — home help and elderly care services for Wallonia and the Brussels-Capital Region.
• PC 318.02 — home help and elderly care services for the Flemish Community.

The split reflects that care is a community-level competence in Belgium. Flanders, Wallonia, and Brussels each maintain their own subsidy and recognition framework, and therefore distinct sectoral agreements for employees.

PC 318.02 includes the recognised home-care services in Flanders, as well as organisations providing childcare and family support within the Flemish care landscape. Nanny's references this subcommittee for wage and working-condition benchmarks for white-collar staff in our care context.

White-collar or blue-collar within PC 318?

Within PC 318, both white-collar (bediende) and blue-collar (arbeider) roles exist. The correct classification depends on the nature of the work: predominantly mental work (administration, coordination, organisation, planning, communication) points to white-collar status; predominantly manual work (household execution, physical caregiving) to blue-collar status.

Since the unified-status law (2014), most differences between the two statuses have been levelled out — notice periods, sick days, probation. What remains are sector-specific differences around wage scales, seniority rules, year-end bonuses, and certain holiday rules.

One key practical difference: white-collar staff in PC 318 are entitled to double holiday pay (dubbel vakantiegeld), but the single holiday pay is built into the monthly salary, which simply continues during leave. Blue-collar workers, by contrast, receive both single and double holiday pay as a separate annual payment via the National Holiday Office.

At Nanny's, our nannies and family assistants in coordinating, organising, and planning roles fall under the white-collar framework. To calculate net salary, see our [salary simulator](/loonsimulatie), which applies the Belgian withholding tax according to Annex III.

Practical implications for families and candidates

For families: anyone employing a nanny or family assistant under a PC 318 framework takes on the role of employer and must account for:

• Sectoral minimum wages based on seniority and function. Nanny's uses an indicative gross rate starting at €44/hour.
• Employer social-security contributions of roughly 25% on top of gross salary.
• Year-end bonus and double holiday pay as annual commitments.
• Workplace-accident insurance (mandatory).
• A payroll secretariat (sociaal secretariaat) for payroll administration. We point families to recognised secretariats such as Liantis, SD Worx, or Acerta.

For candidates: working in a PC 318 context entitles you to:

• A legally set minimum wage, sectorally indexed.
• Sectoral leave (4 statutory weeks + sectoral days).
• Year-end bonus as agreed in the CLA.
• Access to training funds (subcommittee-dependent).
• The social and fiscal employment bonus (werkbonus) if your salary falls below the thresholds.

For situation-specific questions, we always recommend contacting a payroll secretariat or union — they hold the most up-to-date information per CLA and subcommittee.

Frequently Asked Questions