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Workers’ Participation in Czechia and Slovakia

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The Palgrave Handbook of Workers’ Participation at Plant Level

Abstract

This chapter reviews the formation, regulation, and practice of worker participation in Czechia and Slovakia since state socialism before 1989, throughout economic transformations in the 1990s and EU accession and the implementation of the Directive on Information and Consultation of Employees after 2002.

It shows that worker participation is firmly institutionalized and embedded in both countries’ legal systems with trade unions serving as most important organizations. The relevance of Works Councils and other participation forms remains marginal. The actual practice of worker participation is declining due to decreasing union and employer densities, bargaining decentralization, and strong dependence of employment relations on labor legislation in both countries. Strengthening worker participation requires overcoming power struggles between trade unions and Works Councils and more initiatives facilitating workplace democracy.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The common term for these agreements is ‘higher-level’ collective agreements, which can be multiemployer covering several employers but not the whole sector; or sectoral which have a sector-wide coverage.

  2. 2.

    In Czechia, ČMKOS-affiliated unions negotiated 22 sectoral agreements in 2000 and 17 in 2016 (ČMKOS 2016). Four agreements were extended to cover all employers in the sector in 2016 (http://www.mpsv.cz/cs/3856).

  3. 3.

    Information System on Working Conditions (2009–2013), Trexima Slovakia.

  4. 4.

    The 2011 Slovak Labour Code amendment introduced a possibility of derogations in collective agreements, but it was recalled after 2012 in reference to ILO Conventions. The provision remained virtually unused.

  5. 5.

    While the respective law does not give the works councils any co-determination rights explicitly, the Czech constitutional court effectively granted works councils co-determination rights in the area of setting holiday periods (Horecký 2015; see Horecký and Stránský 2011).

  6. 6.

    In Slovakia, a legislative change of 2011 allowed employers to grant unpaid time-off to worker representatives, but this provision was valid for less than two years only before returning to the original provision of paid time-off.

  7. 7.

    The average share of public sector employment on total employment reached 19.1% in Czechia and 21.1% in Slovakia between 2008 and 2011 (EC 2013, p. 94).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. European Trade Union Institute (ETUI), Brussels, Belgium

    Jan Drahokoupil

  2. Central European Labour Studies Institute (CELSI), Bratislava, Slovakia

    Marta Kahancová

Authors
  1. Jan Drahokoupil
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  2. Marta Kahancová
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Correspondence to Marta Kahancová .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Social Movements and Department of History, Ruhr University Bochum, Bochum, Germany

    Stefan Berger

  2. Department of Social Sciences, Ruhr University Bochum, Bochum, Germany

    Ludger Pries  & Manfred Wannöffel  & 

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Drahokoupil, J., Kahancová, M. (2019). Workers’ Participation in Czechia and Slovakia. In: Berger, S., Pries, L., Wannöffel, M. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Workers’ Participation at Plant Level. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-48192-4_16

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-48192-4_16

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