Strengthening legislation, weakening collective bargaining? Two faces of trade union strategies in Czechia and Slovakia

Abstract

The paper studies how unions used two types of resources, namely, access to national legislation/policy and to collective bargaining, to improve working conditions in healthcare and in agency work in Czechia and Slovakia. It examines how these two types of institutional resources interact, whether they are potentially in competition and how this affects union revitalization. Unions’ post-2008 strategies in the two sectors converged towards political action due to their preference for legislative regulation of issues previously bargained about or unregulated. The paper argues that extensive use of institutional safeguards contributes to improving working conditions; however, prioritizing political action may weaken other types of union strategies and undermine future access to collective bargaining. In other words, extensive utilization of one institutional resource (legislation) may gradually weaken other types of resources (collective bargaining) and thereby undermine the overall revitalization capacity of trade unions.

Arms-length influence: Public sector wage setting and export-led economic growth in Czechia and Slovakia

“…While wages were determined via collective bargaining, pressures increased for legal regulation of wages (ibid.). This signaled a weakening role of wage bargaining and a shift in social partners’ priorities to legal solutions as an alternative wage setting procedure (Kahancová and Martišková 2023). Still, a small part of healthcare workers, mostly in healthcare authorities, are remunerated by the higher-level collective agreement for public service.…”

“…In result, PS wage increases were politicized (the last one applicable to education workers in Czechia in 2022 Slovakia for 2023) and independent from developments in the export sector. What has shifted, however, is that wage increases are better achieved by legislation than by collective bargaining even in a coordinated bargaining system (Kahancová and Martišková 2023).…”

Uphill struggle: collective bargaining for the self-employed in Poland

“…Instead, they tend to react to situations, for example, by supporting or joining protests organised spontaneously by the workers. The unions have also used alternative methods to typical collective bargaining, such as informal negotiations with employers (similar to trade union strategies in other CEE countries: Kahancová and Martišková, 2023) and initiatives aimed at establishing statutory standards for non-employees, including lobbying efforts targeted at politicians. This occurred particularly in the period 2015–2023 when the ruling party declared its support for vulnerable social groups (Gyulavári and Pisarczyk, 2023).…”

20 years after. Changing perspectives on industrial relations in Central and Eastern Europe two decades after EU enlargement: from transition to transformation

“…In the post-2008 polycrisis years, however, there has been a tendency among employer organisations to opt out of collective bargaining in some countries. In Slovakia, for example, they changed their legal form to ensure that bargaining is not obligatory (Kahancová et al, 2019). In other countries, such as Poland, multinationals have not driven the development of employer organisations and have joined them only selectively and with little enthusiasm for promoting collective bargaining.…”