Trade unions and austerity in Central and Eastern Europe

Abstract

Austerity measures in the wake of the recent world financial crisis often translated into large cuts in public employment and spending, and tax increases. Trade unions throughout Central and Eastern Europe had a disillusioning record of protecting their members against the previous wave of market-making reforms that swept through the entire region in the 1990s. Would unions perform better this time? As the article shows, in three of the four countries discussed below (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Romania) trade unions were able to launch protests and nationwide strikes, arguably a sign of their growing capacity to mobilize discontent and of their willingness to risk their relationship with the government.

Ten years of enlargement and the forces of labour in Central and Eastern Europe

“…Secondly, Beissinger and Sasse note that public sector employees took a major role in the protests. This is also confirmed by several contributions to this special issue, as well as by the authors of an earlier Transfer issue that focused on crisis responses in the region (Varga, 2015; Kahancová, 2015; Glassner ed., 2013). It is easier to make sense of the coincidence of the significant participation of public sector workers, the inferior role of strikes, and the dominance of demonstrations joined by social movements and NGOs, if we take cognizance of a peculiar asymmetry between union density and endowment with basic labour rights in Central and Eastern European private and public sectors.…”

“…Against all odds, strikes (even general strikes) do of course also occur in the new EU Member States. This is because, as convincingly argued by one of the authors of this issue, structural constraints should not be viewed as fate but as obstacles which, under favorable conditions, can be overcome by trade unions’ mobilizing skill and will (Varga, 2015).…”

“…Protests of Slovak and Polish health care workers threatening with exit if their demands for improved wages and work conditions are not met are other cases in point. Arguably, availability of the exit option was likely to amplify the effect of voice even in cases when – like in Estonia or Romania – aggrieved health care employees did not emphasize the link between seeking a remedy for their grievances and their possibilities to leave (Kahancová, 2015; Varga, 2015).…”

Social protests, discontent and politics in southern and eastern Europe

“…In contrast, in Central and Eastern Europe, trade unions had neither the power nor the tradition of exerting pressure through social mobilisation as a means of compensating for their weak and declining institutional power (Bernaciak, 2014, 2017; Greskovits, 2015; Neumann and Tóth, 2017; Varga, 2015). Greskovits (2015: 272) described the trends in the decade after the accession as one of hollowing and backsliding:hollowing refers to workers’ evaporating involvement in the institutions and processes of industrial democracy measured by declining union density or union members’ declining participation in contentious and non-contentious forms of collective action […].…”

Is migration from Central and Eastern Europe an opportunity for trade unions to demand higher wages? Evidence from the Romanian health sector

“…Following its Memorandum of Understanding with the IMF and the EU, the government intimidated critical union leaders (Varga, 2015) and radically altered the 2003 Labour Code ---as elsewhere by executive order 'to prevent unwelcome legislative amendments by labor-friendly parliamentary majorities' (Erne, 2015: 11) ---and curtailed collective bargaining legislation. The new law on social dialogue undermined fundamental trade union rights (Varga, 2015) and made it more difficult to negotiate collective agreements at all levels and limited their maximum duration to 24 months (Barbuceanu, 2014: 6). In consequence, the coverage rate slumped from 70 to 20 percent between 2008 in 2011 (Visser, 2013).…”