Industrial Relations in Europe 2012 - European Commission - Europa

Chapter 2: Industrial relations developments in the new member
states in Central and Eastern Europe
There is a large degree of heterogeneity across the different CEECs. Industrial relations
structures and processes remain relatively quite weak in some, and the crisis has hit hard.
Future challenges include building the social dialogue and national industrial relations
systems.
Based on a draft by Marta Kahancová (Central European Labour Studies Institute, Bratislava)
Introduction
EU enlargement in 2004 and 2007 increased the diversity of industrial relations systems
across the EU. In particular, the 10 new Member States in Central and Eastern Europe (the
CEECs) increased the variation in structural and institutional characteristics of industrial
relations in the EU. Compared to the member states that joined by EU prior to 2004 (EU-15),
CEEC industrial relations, with the exception of Slovenia, are characterised by weaker trade
unions, a lack of employer willingness to organise in employers’ associations, a lower
incidence of bipartite collective bargaining, persistently lower bargaining coverage, greater
government involvement in social partnership but at the same time a contested position of
tripartite concertation and social dialogue. This chapter presents an overview of industrial
relations in the CEECs since the 1990s.
The chapter argues that while there is wide diversity between these countries, industrial
relations institutions (and actors) in CEECs remain weak and fragmented, and some
developments in this respect are worrying, as some reforms underway undermine the
consensus which is needed for an effective involvement of social partners in adapting to
change: in a number of these countries responses to the crisis are generating increasingly
conflictual industrial relations. In some cases, the question of the compatibility of these
reforms with international agreements or conventions has been raised. There is a need to
revitalise national industrial relation systems and to support their actions in order to promote
and restore consensus to ensure the long term sustainability of the economic and social
reforms underway.
The focus is on the main differences in structural indicators between the EU-15 and the
CEECs, as well as on the internal diversity among particular CEECs and country clusters. The
chapter also explores the potential of CEEC social partners to stabilise and innovate on
industrial relations structures through responding to labour market developments after EU
enlargement and the economic crisis. Finally, the chapter evaluates the future of industrial
relations in the CEECs with a particular focus on the capacity of industrial relations
institutions to accommodate Europeanisation of social dialogue and collective bargaining
practices.
Industrial relations in most EU-15 Member States in Western Europe have evolved
systematically since the post-war period in the context of democracy and a market economy.
By contrast, industrial relations in the CEECs developed in the context of state socialism until
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