Worker Representation and Industrial Relations in the CEE Acceding States: What Influence Europeanization?

For the past decade, the transition polities of Central and Eastern Europe have struggled to transform the state-socialist trade union legacy of the past into a modern, representative trade union movement, and to integrate their industrial relations system into that already established within the European Union. Despite transposing European worker representation directives into their domestic labor law, however, in most of these countries, there is little resembling a vibrant, independent trade union movement. Union membership has precipitously declined since the start of the transition. Most collective bargaining adds little to the minimum standards established by the labor code. An important portion of apparently new trade union organizing is by employers who themselves support development of "yellow unions" which utilize the provision of the labor code permitting derogation against the interest of the workers from minimum standards, provided the workers have trade union representation. Works councils, too, have thus far failed to function as an effective voice for the workers. On the employer side, weak or non-existent employer associations have made it difficult to establish collective bargaining at the sectoral level. This paper will review these developments, with an emphasis on the Hungarian case, and then consider possible avenues by which the industrial relations systems of the CEE countries could be strengthened and brought to life. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]