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Unions Laud Social Dialogue at Tripartite Level Last Year
Thursday 07 January 2010 Zoom in | Print page
Bratislava, January 7 (TASR) - Reviewing the past year on Thursday, Slovakia's Trade Union Confederation (KOZ) said that it's satisfied with the state of social dialogue at tripartite level, which worked in 2009, notwithstanding the global economic crisis complicating negotiations.
"As a negative consequence of the crisis we see unemployment, which rose from 9 to 13 percent," KOZ president Miroslav Gazdik told reporters.
To tackle the economic crisis KOZ signed a memorandum with the Government, pledging to seek wage increases that would correspond to labour productivity.
"We've determined that certain employers have misused the crisis to camouflage their own incompetence, illegitimately restrained wages and had employees sign declarations curtailing their rights," said Gazdik.
Despite the quality of the social dialogue, the unions are critical of certain measures and steps taken by the Government. "We have welcomed three packages of measures to mitigate the crisis, but have also warned the Government that there have been too many measures that were unspecific and opaque and manageable only with difficulty. We'd like to see more activity from economy-related ministers in creating employment-boosting schemes so that the Labour, Social Affairs and the Family Ministry isn't left having to tackle the fallout from joblessness," said KOZ vice-president Vladimir Mojs.
Unions praised the Government for not going into negotiations to amend the Labour Code as proposed by employers' associations, but they aren't happy with the decision to raise the minimum wage by 4.1 percent rather than the 8.1 percent proposed by KOZ.
Both leaders of the union federation that represents most of the country's trade unions have chosen bringing down joblessness as this year's priority and see one of the most important measures in building a knowledge-based society, especially because Slovakia's low or underskilled labour force compounds the risk of job losses.
KOZ is undergoing an integration process with affiliated unions. It comprises 29 unions with some 360,000 members.
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