Slovenia at the crossroads: Increasing dependence on supranational institutions and the weakening of social dialogue

Abstract

Since the world crisis hit Slovenia, the reconfiguration of the industrial relations system has mainly been exogenously determined. Public debt and the related dependence on supranational institutions and financial (bond) markets have been strongly correlated with the unilateral imposition of these institutions' demands and pressures. Despite the mounting pressures, the formal structure of industrial relations has not undergone major changes, but within this structure there are clear signs of major changes in power relations and in the logic and quality of the industrial relations system.

All roads lead to decentralization? Collective bargaining trends and prospects in Central and Eastern Europe

“…Even so, between 2007 and 2010, the incidence of collective agreement breaches increased more than fivefold (Krašovec and Luzar, 2013). Stanojević and Mrčela’s (2014) study based on evidence from the metal, electronic and chemical sectors similarly documents progressive collective bargaining decentralization, manifested by the shorter duration of collective agreements, more frequent cancellations of agreed provisions, and the increased use of derogations from sector-level agreements. This suggests that, despite strong bargaining partnership traditions, Slovenia is slowly drifting away from the social partnership model.…”

A Paradigmatic Shift? Economic Crises and Labour Market Policies on the Eu’s (Semi-)Periphery

“…The strongest party was again SDS that pushed for adoption of the Fiscal Balance Act (2012), which lowered the public sector wage scale by 8%, imposed even more radical spending cuts in the area of social security, decreased child and parental allowances and reduced the pensions of almost 30,000 people -this was later ruled to be unconstitutional. The next government, led by liberals, adopted another 4.5% wage cut in the public sector and increased value-added tax (Stanojević et al, 2016;Hočevar, 2020;. Unemployment rose from 4.4% to above 10% in 2011, while the answer to this increase was the implementation of ALMPs (Hočevar, 2020) and the rise in the use of temporary contract arrangements.…”

The impact of crisis and restructuring on employment relations in banking: The cases of France, Luxembourg and Romania

“…In banking, more specifically, Nicolaisen (2011) identifies Ireland as a case of ‘unorganized’ decentralization, whereas the Swedish case involves ‘organized’ decentralization. In Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), ‘disorganized’ decentralization prevails, except as in Slovenia (Stanojević et al, 2016). This typology is relevant for our analysis, as it provides a distinction between Western and Eastern European developments in employment relations.…”