Together at Work in Slovakia
Social dialogue in the Slovak Republic takes place at national, sectoral and corporate level. National Social Dialogue is institutionalized into the form of national tripartite - the Economic and Social Council, in which trade unions are represented through the Confederation of Trade Unions of the Slovak Republic. At the national level, tripartite focuses on discussing legislative proposals that have a social impact on employees and citizens, as well as on strategies having a societal dimension. At sectoral level, social dialogue is implemented through sectoral collective agreements. However, sectoral bargaining is fragmented and does not exist in many sectors because there are no social partners on the employers' side. Where sectoral collective agreements are concluded, their content is determined by low support of the membership due to low coverage. OZ KOVO is negotiating a sectoral collective agreement in the engineering, metallurgical, electrical and glass industries, in the services sector and until recently also in the bus transport sector. The employers' association in bus transport created an obstruction in the negotiations, by changing its statutes and releasing its collective bargaining obligation. We consider this to be a significant step back in the sectoral social dialogue in Slovakia.
The most important level of social dialogue in Slovakia is the company level. This fact is given historically, when the collective bargaining in the past took place only at the company level and it is also conditioned by the legislation that applies in Slovakia.
OZ KOVO at company level concludes almost 400 company collective agreements each year, the core of which are wage and working time issues. OZ KOVO evaluates the content of these collective agreements annually on the basis of a questionnaire survey.
According to the data, employees who are subject to a collective agreement have 20% higher wages than those who do not negotiate a collective agreement.
Social dialogue in Slovakia does not have its structures at the level of bipartite and regional social dialogue, which in the end does not contribute to the society-wide consensus on addressing the most important social and employment issues in particular.
As part of the Together at Work Campaign, OZ KOVO has launched a dedicated web page for its members. We have also promoted the campaign on social media and in our union press. You can find more coverage of the campaign in Slovakia in the section below.
The union has also began a campaign of contacting national and European parliamentarians to highlight the importance of collective bargaining. More information about the campaign in Slovakia will follow soon!
