From 29 to 30 June 2017 took place in Budapest a seminar within the EZA special project for workers' organisations in the Western Balkans "Strengthening social dialogue – shaping European integration", organized by MOSZ (Munkástanácsok Országos Szövetsége), with the support of EZA and of the European Union.
The aim of these projects to EZA is to support workers’ organizations in the Western Balkan during the European integration procedures in order to improve the status of employees.
24 representatives of workers’ organisations from Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia and Hungary participated at the seminar.
Mr. Imre Palkovics, president of MOSZ opened the seminar, whereby he emphasized: for Hungary and other post-socialist countries it has been difficult to understand and apply the rules set by the European Union, therefore such meetings are always bringing us together to understand: how we can influence, shape the rules applicable in our case.
He added: workers’ organizations are called to present the interests of employment towards the European Parliament. As he said: “Through these institutions we can collect the problems, can draw the attention to the goal set by the founding fathers of the European Union which is: that in the framework of the social dialogue a lot can be done for the improvement of the wellbeing of workers, which can be achieved and realized in a regulated environment!”
Mrs. Aleksandra Lekic, the head of the international department of the Serbian TUC NESAVISNOST has presented the current challenges in the integration procedures from a Serbian point of view. As she said, the rate of employment is distressing in Serbia, the pre-integration funds cannot be utilized. The government lies constantly about the state of the economy and about the ratio of the employed. Trade unions do not get the possibility to merge into procedures.
Back in the days the NESAVISNOST has been given a great role in the anti-war activities and played a significant role in the abolishment of the Milošević regime. The independent intellectuals, the democratic opposition and the independent trade union, the NESAVISNOST have opened a common bureau and together with the NGOs have been given the opportunity to orientate the power into a democratic direction. They could manage a social dialogue with the Serbian Democratic Party within an institutional framework. It took almost 5 years as they could pass the law about trade unions. Recently Serbia has regressed from being a developed union republic into an individual state, recession has developed; the government tries to cover the recession. The rate of employment decreases, many young people are unemployed, the social circumstances and those of employment is more and more difficult. She added: “We tried to maintain a good relation to the media but even today a censure is in force regarding workers’ organizations. The number of trade union members constantly decreases which happens partly due to the fact that not everyone can join trade unions only those who are employed, therefore young people and pensioners are out of target.
They were exposed to the post communist shock therapy, the effect of which can still be felt today, the institutional structure and legislation could not catch up with today’s expectations.
Dr. Balázs Rossu, assistant lecturer of the Faculty of Law and Political Sciences of the University of Szeged has drawn the attention to his suggestion that the regulation subscribing the limitations to trade union membership has to be examined. The possibility of discrimination arises in this case, which needs to be reported to the European Union.
The main topic of the following roundtable-discussion was the effect and judgment of the political engagement of trade union leaders. According to the opinion of the Serbian participants the fact that Vladislav Jevtovic took a political position had a negative effect on the movement. They were not supporting this activity. They believe that more and more independent experts need to take part in the integration procedures.
Imre Palkovics has raised the question: “Can and do trade unions need to relate to political parties? As he said, without the direct influence of politics trade unions cannot prevail. This is how the Labour Party in the United Kingdom has come to life. The role of the government has increased and everybody pursues to influence that. Are trade unions able to influence governmental decision-making? Are they able to represent employees individually? The systems nowadays are often called instead of democracy a “particracy” with a reason.”
Dr. Balázs Rossu in his presentation emphasized: Hungary is a bad example for how to implement the European Union regulation. The major goal of labour law is basically to sustain social peace. Unfortunately in the procedure of implementation responsibility and creativity were missing. “We were trying to follow the regulation of the European Union slavishly and weren’t taking into account that if a member country do not conform the guidelines means a great problem and is violating the common minimum” – said the lecturer of the University of Szeged.
Dr. Judit Czuglerné Ivány, the jurisdictional vice president of the National Confederation of Workers’ Councils added: she took part in the negotiation procedure, she was representing the party of the employee. Unfortunately the representatives of the employee were involved on the later phases of negotiations. It is very important for trade unions to be able to take part in the procedures from the very beginning at the wording of legislations.
Dr. Gábor T. Fodor has been talking about the approximation of laws involved in the integration procedure from a Hungarian prospective with special attention on collective labour law. He said, even though they were attending many study tours before the integration procedure they weren’t able to prepare enough for the changes since they could not see what challenges will the CEE countries face during the integration procedure. As the New Labour Code came into force the role of collective agreements has been upgraded.
Dr. Judit Czuglerné Ivány was talking about the national application of the legal framework of the European social dialogue. As she said, the legal basis of everything is the article Nr. 154, 155. of the Treaty of the Functioning of the European Union. The capacity building provides the improvement of efficiency through the European Social Fund. Aim is the development of a single social network and the common minimum regulation. In her presentation, the legal vice president has detailed the common agreements, planned objectives and the difficulties emerging during the bargaining process.
Mr. Viliam Černý the member of the Youth Platform of the Slovakian NKOS was the last presenter. He said: the NKOS is a Christian workers’ organization and is representing the workers of road transport. 85% of the members are female. By presenting the strike at Volkswagen as a concrete example he illustrated the procedure of social dialogue in Slovakia. In this case workers were demanding a 16% increase of wages, whereby in the end salaries were raised by 4 %.
During the Seminar the topic of the relation of trade unions to the media has been coming up quite often. Imre Palkovics, the president of MOSZ has initiated a Seminar relating to this topic where the possibilities in the modern media would be discovered in order to make communication of workers’ organization more efficient.
The discussion following the presentation came to the result that we have been fallen back to the beginning of 2000. In their opinion Europe can only survive the current period of time if it becomes a Europe with democracy. This is its only chance for survival, not the Europe of multinational corporations and its governments!