IV. Effectiveness of the Slovak labor unions
What are the main successes LU have reached in the past fourteen years?
Among most important legal institutions belongs Tripartite (Rada hospodárskej a sociálnej dohody = Committee for social and economical agreement), which is an annual summit of equal number of representatives of labor unions, government and employers. A result of such a summit is a General treaty, which encompasses all three subjects and sets formal rules for the next year. Subject of these treatments are issues as minimal wages, social care and Medicare, non-financial rewards, etc. Each June or July there is a plenary meeting of tripartite in Geneva, which deals with EU laws and their implementation in Slovakia. This shows strong correlation between Slovakia and EU, and its real consequences. This topic also concerns European agreements (Európske dohovory).
Labor unions evaluate as a significant contribution the fact, that labor unions offer their members legal support (layers) in the case of labor lawsuits (employee vs. employer). This service is available only for LU members.
Refunding wages from funds in case of strike is common in most countries, and it is based on the membership payment of 1% from the wage. Aliquot parts of wages are refunded during the strikes from LU funds, which might ensure capability of workers on strike to persevere. However, in our country this case hasn’t happened yet.
Labor unions count among their successes also their membership in European Trade Union Confederation (EUK) and International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (International). These organizations help to coordinate international campaigns in order to reach universal goals. It helps to improve the formal voice of our labor unions, too.
Collective agreement as a result of collective bargaining is the basic tool of labor unions; however, from the law only labor union can act as a partner for employers in the collective bargaining. This gives them an advantage from “employees committee”, which may be seen as a kind of competition for LU.
On the other side, privatization and the role of labor unions, which had a representative in every privatization committee from law, in this process was rather unsuccessful, because unions representatives failed in pursuing goals of labor unions, mostly because of corruption[7].
Among the failures of labor unions we can count cancellation of the lower or free fares for workers, and last unsuccessful referendum as well.
Klement
Sobota, 23. novembra 2024
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