May 2002 - VOLUME 23 - NUMBER 5
An Interview with Jasna Petrovic
Jasna Petrovic is editor in chief of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unionsí Central and Eastern Europe (ICFTUís CEE) Network Bulletin, and the regional coordinator of the ICFTU CEE Womenís Network. She is a trade union publicist and activist living in Croatia
The World Bank is clear on what needs to be done: deregulate workersí rights, annul or considerably reduce severance pay, facilitate dismissals, introduce fixed-term contracts as a rule, extend probationary periods for new employees, shorten annual vacations, strengthen employers, weaken trade unions. |
Multinational Monitor: What is the current level of union representation
of workers in Central and Eastern Europe? Trade unions had a role as shock-absorber of potential social unrest,
and membership dues were pumped into social support programs at the company
level: purchase of cheap meat and other sorts of food with favorable arrangements
of payment, crediting of purchases of clothes, electrical appliances,
excursions several times a year, free or subsidized holidays on the coast,
etc. In the late 1980s, particularly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, when
the new trade unions started emerging, the majority of workers were asked,
for the first time in their life, if they wanted to be union members.
Many workers used this feeling of freedom, this right to a choice, to
refuse being members of any union. However, due especially to two factors first, inertia and automatic
dues collection and, second, fear of liberal or even nationalist and right-wing
parties most chose to remain union members. The first phase of
the democratization of trade unions was relatively painless for trade
unions, and membership figures dropped to 60 percent to 70 percent of
the total number of employed persons. However, the economic transition and the disintegration of old industrial
giants and agricultural and industrial conglomerates have led to sudden
lay-offs of a large number of workers. The unemployment rate in the region
is moving between 30 percent to 50 percent in Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro,
Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. According to current estimates, trade union density, if you take into
consideration all unionized workers in any trade union, including the
company-level unions, is now much lower. According to International Labor
Organization data from 1997, trade union membership in ex-communist countries
declined by approximately 50 percent over the decade prior. An October
2000 survey for the ICFTU CEE Network Bulletin confirmed that the decrease
is continuing in all countries. Unions from Bulgaria and the Czech Republic
reported a unionization rate of approximately 30 percent; Estonia, 15
percent; Latvia, 25 percent; and Croatia. 47 percent. MM: How has the trade union movement institutionally experienced
the transition from the communist period? Have new unions replaced the
old unions? Are new leaders in place in old unions? Romanias Fratia uniquely united with the CNSLR, the largest reformed
trade union confederation, thus becoming the largest trade union in the
country. Polands Solidarnosc, however, still refuses all contact
with the reformed Communist trade union OPZZ. By the mid-1990s, more tolerant relationships between the so-called old
and new trade unions started developing, particularly as some new people
appeared at the head of the so-called old reformed trade unions. However, in many trade unions, particularly those that call themselves
reformed, there remain old trade union leaders, and old, Communist patterns
of thinking and behaving. Older trade union cadres are to be found mainly
at the level of branch federations, that suddenly declared autonomy and
are behaving in a rather feudalist manner, refusing joint integration
with other unions. Many things are indeed changing, however. Recently, for example, in the
area of former Yugoslavia, numerous charismatic trade union leaders that
came to power during Communism lost their leading positions. Thus, in
a democratic fight, a Bosnian and Herzegovinian trade union leader lost
his position. In April, the Macedonian leader similarly lost a democratic
contest, and just recently, the Kosovar leader withdrew from the electoral
run at the last moment by resigning. Similar changes have been noted at
the head of the Romanian CNSLR-Fratia and the Moldavian FGSRM. MM: To what degree are labor rights respected in Central and Eastern
Europe? However, a real campaign of the World Bank and the International Monetary
Fund is currently under way in almost all countries of the region, aiming
at urgent new revisions in labor laws in all of the countries in order
to ensure the liberalization of the labor market, flexibilization of labor
relations and reduction of workers rights. This is an attempt to attack
trade unions, and motivated by a desire to reduce their influence. Overall, workers rights are least observed in countries with a more intensive
entry of international and foreign capital, that is, in Baltic and Central
European countries. MM: What are some of the common problems in the region related
to respect for labor rights? Laws are still relatively pro-worker and socially sensitive, but the
reality is not. A large number of workers are in the street and have no
prospect of finding a new job. Many find themselves in court demanding
unpaid severance pay or unpaid wages, or are in labor disputes over the
issue of their return to work. Courts in the entire region have not been transformed, and an average
court case lasts between three and ten years. This is a major problem
in the region, because employers have an advantage at the very start due
to the inefficient and slow judiciary. Lately, a major problem has been the instability of employment contracts.
Private employers are increasingly employing workers with fixed-term agreements
or hiring them illegally. It is estimated that the informal economy involves
50 percent more workers than the official figures show, and these are
unprotected workers, even if they are registered as employed, receiving
minimum wages and having no rights. Collective bargaining agreements most
often do not cover them. The informal economy in the region is estimated at an average of 40 percent
to 50 percent of the gross national income, much less in industry, and
much more in trade. This problem is also related to corruption, weapons, cars and drug trafficking,
which are also considerable problems of this, until recently, a war region.
MM: How well represented are women in Central and Eastern European
trade unions? However, the burden of the transition to the market economy also weighs
more heavily on women than on men, particularly because of the decline
of social and public services and growing unemployment and inflation,
both of which adversely affect the financial situation of families. The proportion of unionized women (44.8 percent) is higher than the proportion
of women in full-time employment (43.6 percent), which shows their strong
interest in organization and active involvement in trade unions. Despite
that, women are discriminated against in their own trade unions. They
are barely or insufficiently represented in decision-making bodies and
in high positions in the trade union. At the top of the trade union they
are, as a rule, invisible. Although women make one half of the trade union membership, there are
only 27.8 percent of them at congresses of trade union confederations.
There are considerable differences between countries, thus at trade union
congresses in Baltic countries women are as much as 41.7 percent, while
in the Balkans countries there is 19.3 percent on average. Among delegates
to the latest congress of Polands Solidarnosc, women were less than
10 percent. MM: How have women organized to remedy these problems with the
union hierarchy? Unsatisfied with slow pace of ICFTUs political structures and administration,
women representing several countries from Central and Eastern Europe first
met on November 6-7, 1997, at a pre-session in Zagreb where the International
Womens Conference was held due to the initiative of the Womens
Section of the Union of Autonomous Trade Unions of Croatia, in cooperation
with the Solidarity Center (of the AFL-CIO) situated there. On November
14-15, 1997, in the city of Gdansk, the Womens Committee of the
NSZZ Solidarnosc hosted numerous women trade union representatives from
the region, sponsored by LO from Sweden and FGTB from Belgium. There were
16 participants representing 12 organizations from nine countries. They
agreed to put a womens trade union network in place. As of January 2002, 29 womens interest groups have been established
and are active in 29 separate trade union confederations in 19 countries.
In a little over four years of existence, the ICFTU CEE Womens Network
has increased by a 142 percent. Things are starting to move. MM: How has privatization affected workers and labor rights? Despite expectations, foreign capital has not entered the region in an
intense manner. This is due to a range of factors, including extremely
complicated and bureaucratized procedures, corruption and a relatively
high labor cost. However, privatization has definitely affected the level of workers rights
because it has been conducted without a clear strategy or supervision.
Workers shares in private enterprises were generally worth in nominal
value up to 10 times more than the market value, except in the case of
privatization of particularly valuable companies. MM: Are there cases in CEE countries were control over privatized
enterprises was transferred to workers? MM: How has privatization affected previously existing collective bargaining
agreements? The more frequent phenomenon in the region is that, after the expiration
of the enforced collective agreement, the new private owners refuse to
engage in collective bargaining, or intimidate workers who declare themselves
union members. MM: How significant is the influence of the International Monetary
Fund (IMF) and World Bank in CEE countries? How are the policies they
are promoting affecting workers? In countries in Central and Eastern Europe, they are selling their door-to-door
product, in a standardized and uniform way, just as they have been in
other developing countries for the past 20 years. The model of development that they are promoting is anti-worker and anti-unionist,
focused on privatization, deregulation and trade and financial liberalization.
These are socially insensitive models that are increasing world poverty
and lowering living standards of workers and are increasing the gaps between
rich and poor, between and within countries. In Central and Eastern Europe, the World Bank has recently been advising
several countries to carry out revisions to national labor codes which
would restrict collective bargaining rights, eliminate open-end employment
contracts, reduce wages, lead to mass redundancies in former state-owned
companies and the public sector, cut down on severance pay and flexibilize
dismissal. This is currently taking place in Montenegro, Poland, Croatia,
Macedonia, Lithuania and numerous other countries in the region. World Bank and International Monetary Fund workshops even elaborate public
campaigns for the adoption of such restrictive labor laws. Thus it is
a fashionable trend in the region to explain to journalists and the public
that the labor laws are not amended in order to make them more beneficial
for employers and international capital, but to harmonize them with the
European Union regulations and ILO standards! At the same time, they have already managed to impose on all countries
in the region, apart from Slovenia, the Chilean model of pension reform
with private funds that autonomously manage capitalized pension savings,
without any control exerted by the workers whose money is paid from their
gross wages. They continue insisting on reductions or even annulment of
the pay-as-you-go scheme. They insist on the privatization of health care,
education, public transport, all banks, and soon, perhaps, even distribution
companies for water and electricity. It is all the sadder that actually nothing changes in the region that
used to live under a centralized dictatorship and according to centralized
models. These are merely some new masters. MM: Can you elaborate on how the IMF and World Bank are advising CEE
countries on labor law reform? Although the World Bank claims that it does not interfere directly in
internal issues, this can be very easily refuted. For example, in Bosnia
and Herzegovina, the World Bank was directly involved in the team that
elaborated the new law. In Montenegro, the Bank joined at the moment when the new draft labor
law was already in the Parliament for adoption, and it exerted pressure
upon the government to withdraw it and announce its flexibilization
and standardization. To desperate people without a job or subsistence, such arguments often
sound reasonable, because they believe that this would help them get to
Europe faster, to the Eldorado that is just waiting to feed all tired
and disappointed people. In Russia, the Bank also produced an internal paper in which it gave
clear-cut directives to the government on how to amend the law, and we
have published this document. In Croatia, the Bank is using an American democratic foundation and is
financing an expert who has been assigned to the Croatian
Government for free and is placed in the Office for Social Dialogue.
One of the experts first jobs is to organize a meeting on amendments
to labor legislation with arguments of europization and standardization.
The World Bank is clear on what needs to be done: deregulate workers
rights, annul or considerably reduce severance pay, facilitate dismissals,
introduce fixed-term contracts as a rule, extend probationary periods
for new employees, shorten annual vacations, strengthen employers, weaken
trade unions, legalize equality of small and large trade unions,
bust collective bargaining at the national level. In Croatia, the World Bank is trying to push through legislation that
would allow the flexibilization of employment contracts in order to have
fixed-time work, because, according to their interpretation, there are
too many workers working under the so-called permanent contracts. MM: What advice have the IMF and World Bank provided on cutting
government spending? What impact does this have on workers? The question to be asked is, on whose behalf is IMF dissatisfied? It
is certain that with such a model, transition countries in the CEE are
not preparing for European integration, because the models of development
that are being imposed and promoted do not comply with European requirements.
Or is it that the EU does not seriously intend to accelerate integration
processes with the East, and, therefore, silently turns a blind eye to
the detrimental modeling by the IMF and World Bank in this region? MM: How are foreign multinationals treating workers in the region?
When it comes to multinationals that establish their own local company,
e.g. McDonalds, workers rights are indeed restricted, and
trade unions are almost banned from entering the company premises. But multinationals (e.g. Siemens, Deutsche Telecom, a number of Italian,
Austrian and German banks, etc.) that enter countries to buy off former
state-owned companies, in general respect signed collective agreements
and existing rights, observe laws and pay workers far more than the average.
MM: To what extent are foreign companies simply relying on Central
and Eastern European countries as a cheap labor pool to make goods to
export to Western Europe? Of course, there are cases where small or medium-sized foreign entrepreneurs
ruined a privatized company, pulled out valuable machines or ruined the
company in another way. But it would be difficult to argue that the basic objective of foreign
capital is to obtain a cheap labor force in this region, because it is
not that cheap, except in the black market. Nevertheless, there are examples of companies, such as Ferrero, that
entered Croatia seeking cheap labor, humiliated workers and quickly moved
to Albania, and then further to the East. By contrast, although the EU directives still do not formally extend
to the non-member states, European multinationals even recently accepted
the possibility of participation of representatives from parts of companies
in non-member states in European works councils. This development is welcome.
MM: What do you expect EU expansion will mean for CEE workers?
Processes of harmonization by which countries come into compliance with EU standards offer benefits for national legislation and practice, but these processes are very slow. It would certainly suit workers to have a unified Europe, built in the positive tradition of sustainable development, social sensitivity and worker-friendliness. |
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The basic problem in the region is the growing poverty, disastrous unemployment levels and massive non-payments of wages due to businessís lack of liquidity. | ||
The proportion of unionized women is higher than the proportion of women in full-time employment. Despite that, women are barely or insufficiently represented in decision-making bodies and in high positions in trade unions.
|
In Central and Eastern Europe, the World Bank has recently been advising several countries to carry out revisions to national labor codes which would restrict collective bargaining rights and reduce wages. | |
It is all the sadder that
nothing changes in the region that used to live under a centralized dictatorship
and according to centralized models. These are merely some new masters. |
When it comes to multinationals that establish their own local company, e.g. McDonalds, workers rights are indeed restricted, and trade unions are almost banned from entering the company premises. |