Industrial Relations in Europe 2012 - European Commission - Europa

2.3.7 Interim conclusions
Unionisation, bargaining levels and practices, the role of tripartism and social pacts, and
employee information and consultation at the workplace varies across the CEECs. Over the
2000s, CEECs converged on the emergence of social pacts. The post-2008 economic crisis
facilitated the conclusion of social pacts even in countries that lacked a tradition of tripartism,
such as the liberal Baltic States.
To assess prospects for Europeanisation of industrial relations within the CEECs, we need to
understand why some industrial relations features differ across these countries. This section
has showed that the extent of labour mobilisation and the government’s interests in
introducing stable bargaining structures were the main preconditions for the emergence of
social partnership across the CEECs. The liberal country cluster (EE, BG, LV, LT and RO)
are best characterised as countries with weakly established or weakly enforced tripartite
institutions, fragmented bargaining (with the exception of Romania), and a varying union
density between the liberal Baltic (EE, LV, LT) and the Balkan (BG, RO) countries. The
welfarist Visegrad countries (CZ, HU, PL and SK) all have strongly entrenched tripartism,
institutions for collective bargaining and employee representation. The Czech Republic and
Slovakia tend to have more of a tradition of social dialogue and a higher level of bargaining
coordination than Poland and Hungary. While Hungary and Poland are examples of countries
with decentralised and fragmented bargaining coverage, Hungary is also characterised by its
national-level concertation structure. Slovenia, which is the only corporatist country in the
CEECs, has gone furthest in institutionalising coordinated bargaining, employee
representation, social pacts and bargaining coverage.
2.4 Re-configuration of industrial relations in the CEECs after EU enlargement, the
economic crisis and public sector austerity
While the previous two sections have focused on developments in structural industrial
relations indicators in the CEECs and their comparison with the EU-15, this section looks at
the particular responses of CEEC social partners to the most important domestic labour
markets challenges that have followed on from EU enlargement and the crisis. Among most
important developments affecting the majority of the CEECs is the post-enlargement mobility
from the CEECs to the EU-15 causing domestic labour shortages in some countries and
sectors. The second major development is the economic crisis that has led to a growth in
unemployment, employment flexibility, precarious employment forms and public sector
austerity across the CEECs. Finally, the crisis has also affected the public sector and fuelled
austerity measures across the whole EU. For more details on austerity measures, the crisis and
the effects of this on public sector industrial relations, see Chapter 4.
This section attempts to answer questions such as how have CEEC social partners dealt with
these challenges in their national settings? Have they utilised opportunities derived from these
developments in order to, for example, negotiate wage increases, strengthen social
partnership, improve bargaining coordination and foster the Europeanisation of national
industrial relations? Given the limited statistical evidence on this kind of social partner action,
this section is largely based on examples and case studies that try to comprehensively cover
developments across the CEECs.
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