Social dialogue in the candidate countries

Social dialogue and EMU in Cyprus, Czech Republic, Latvia, Lithuania and Slovakia - Workshop

Vienna, 26-28 May 2003

Speech abstract - Metka Štoka Debevec

State Undersecretary, Ministry of Labour, Family and Social Affairs, Slovenia

The social partners in Slovenia achieved a new success

After more than a year of discussions and negotiations within a high level tripartite negotiating group, the Slovene social partners and the Government came to an agreement about the most important social and economic questions of their interest. Some of the participants at this workshop will surely remember that it was just a year ago at the similar meeting here in Vienna that we presented the draft contents of the social agreement that was under discussion at that time and we hoped that it would be signed very soon. It took another year to reach a conclusion.

On Monday 22 April the Government and the Social partners finally signed the social agreement for the period from 2003 to 2005.

The high level tripartite negotiating group, led by the Minister of labour, family and social affairs, Mr Vlado Dimovski, started negotiations, after two expert groups nominated by the Economic and social council had finished their work.

The discussions in the negotiating group were very demanding and time consuming and several ministers were involved in the debate with the leading officials of the trade unions and employers associations. In the last period the negotiations took place almost every week and mostly more than once a week.

Compared to the last social agreement, signed for the year 1996, the new agreement covers a much broader area. It includes the most important economic and social questions of interest of the social partners from competitiveness, inflation, taxes, wages, employment, health and safety at work, social and legal security to questions concerning family life, housing and equal opportunities. It defines the common and individual tasks the social partners have to perform in order to reach the general goal set down in the agreement which is the sustainable economic and social development of the country .

The most difficult issues were the public health insurance reform, the tax system reform and the wage policy as usual. There was a lot of discussion on the employer's side about the too heavy burden of the social insurance system on wages and competitiveness; and on the employee's side about the fear that a lot of the rights in the existing system are under threat because of the requests for greater competitiveness. On many occasions the requests from the two parts of the social partners were so far apart and so contradictory that there was no rational answer at all. They requested lower taxation and lower public expenditure at the same time as similar or even higher public services paid from the budget. But finally, after long debates and concessions from all the partners, agreement was reached.

The most important part of the social agreement is the common understanding that only a solution reached by way of dialogue is a good solution and that they will continue to operate in this direction for the whole period for which the agreement is signed. All the reforms that will take place in the next three years will be first discussed with the social partners.

There is also a commitment from the social partners that they will continue to monitor the developments and prepare their own yearly reports about the results, which will be discussed within the economic and social council. Every partner in the agreement can propose discussion at any time about the contents of the agreement or raise any new questions to be discussed or added to the agreement.

The agreement is published in the Official gazette No 40/2003 and is available on the website of the Ministry of labour, family and social affairs.

Metka Štoka Debevec holds a BA degree in Economics, Faculty of Economics of Ljubljana. She is State Undersecretary in the Ministry of Labour Family and Social Affairs of Slovenia and Head of the department of wages. She is responsible for preparing and monitoring wage policy agreements, minimum wage fixing machinery, draft proposals for social agreements and development of social dialogue in Slovenia. She coordinates the work on social agreement within the government and acts as contact person in the PHARE project for enhancing social dialogue. She is also in charge of covering the wage and social dialogue issues in contact with the international institutions (EU Commission, ILO, World Bank and IMF). She is deputy member of the ESC of Slovenia and member of the negotiating group for Social agreement.