The Legal and Institutional Framing of Collective Bargaining in CEE Countries : Between Europeanisation and Decentralisation

The formerly communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) have witnessed a profound transformation of their labour laws since the 1990s and, especially, after their accession to the European Union. Today, in comparison to the other Member States, they continue to have weak trade unions and employers' associations and an underdeveloped system of collective bargaining. Moreover, the recent economic and nancial crisis highlighted the need to invest further efforts in bringing the CEE industrial relations closer to the 'old' Member States, in order to facilitate a more meaningful enforcement of the EU-wide economic and social policies. This is the rst book to scrutinise this important matter in depth. Focusing on four current CEE labour law regimes - in Slovenia, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Poland - that also have different collective bargaining trends and can be said to exemplify some of the main legal and institutional frameworks for collective bargaining that the CEE countries have developed, the author addresses the following major issues: - the transition from a centralised to an open market economy and the degree of continuing residual characteristics; - the extent to which labour laws since the 1990s have enabled an adequate institutionalisation of industrial relations to allow free and voluntary collective bargaining at the national, sectoral, and company levels; and - the effectiveness of the standard-setting role of trade unions and employers' associations insofar as they have persisted or come into play.