The demise of social partnership or a balanced recovery? The crisis and collective bargaining in Slovakia

Abstract

This article analyses the effects the crisis is having on collective bargaining processes, outcomes and institutions in national and sectoral negotiations in the Slovak Republic. It argues that the crisis has had no effect on the continuing demise of social partnership and on trade union marginalization at national level. At sectoral level, the crisis helped two highly organized sectors from the private and public domains of the Slovak economy – the metalworking and health care sectors – consolidate their bargaining institutions, though without bargaining outcomes improving trade union positions. Consolidation has been achieved through procedural changes to bargaining specific to each sector: intensified bargaining as a result of social partners’ common interest in anti-crisis employment measures in the metalworking sector; and the associational strength of trade unions and employer organizations despite escalating post-crisis wage disputes in the health care sector. Sector-level bargaining has thus contributed to a balanced recovery from the crisis more than national-level social dialogue.