Documents Stanojevic, Miroslav 19 results

"Since the world crisis hit Slovenia, the reconfiguration of the industrial relations system has mainly been exogenously determined. Public debt and the related dependence on supranational institutions and financial (bond) markets have been strongly correlated with the unilateral imposition of these institutions' demands and pressures. Despite the mounting pressures, the formal structure of industrial relations has not undergone major changes, but within this structure there are clear signs of major changes in power relations and in the logic and quality of the industrial relations system."

"Even before the end of the one-party system, both Hungary and Slovenia experienced systematic internal market reforms. After the abrupt political transition there has been a complete shift to a market economy. In Hungary, this had clear features of a neoliberal transformation; but in Slovenia an alternative path was taken, involving neo-corporatism with its Keynesian welfare correlates. Yet during the last decade, a new wave of radical neoliberal change has occurred in both countries. In this article, I compare the transformations in both countries, in order to identify the conditions underlying the neoliberal turn in each. "

"Slovenian trade unions – after the changes in the early 1990s and then a period of stabilisation at relatively high levels of density which lasted for more than a decade – have, in the second half of the last decade, and in accordance with the gradual, irreversible long-term changes in the employment structure and the recent contextual pressures, started to decline rapidly. We have found that the intensity of this change, which started to occur when Slovenia entered the EU, is comparable to the massive changes of the early 1990s. Analysis shows us that, within just a few years, the trade union density rate dropped from 40 per cent to less than 30. The share of unionised blue-collar workers is declining relatively rapidly. Unionisation within public services is stable and/or growing, but not intensively enough to substitute for losses in manufacturing industry. In the concluding part of the article we try to offer – in a sketchy, stylised manner – some explanations for this quite dramatic, unfavourable trend, which have their roots in the twin aims of Slovenia's transition. "

"In this article we outlined main features of the social dialogue and the collective bargaining in Slovenia as they occurred during the 1990s' growth period. Then we tried to identify the main changes at the level of actors and processes that are emerging in the recent period. We found that the highly coordinated Slovenian system from the 1990s has been definitely exposed to the strong socio-economic shocks in the 2000s. Under the pressure of these – as we suggested not entirely externally caused shocks, the system's coordinative capacity was weakening."

"This article first outlines the main features of social dialogue and collective bargaining in Slovenia during the 1990s. It then identifies the main changes affecting actors and processes that emerged in the 2000s and during the recent economic crisis. The highly coordinated Slovenian system of the 1990s has been exposed to strong socio-economic shocks in the 2000s. Under pressure from these shocks the system's capacity for coordination has been weakened. Nevertheless, all attempts to replace social dialogue structures by unilaterally imposed government policies have been basically unsuccessful. "

"The root of the differences between the successful transition inSlovenia and the abortive transition in Serbia, the impetus for the divorce between Serbia and Slovenia which was the starting point of the disintegration of the former Yugoslav federation, lay in the qualitatively different reactions ofthe Serbian and Slovenian political elites to the workers' strike movements of the second half of the 1980s and the early 1990s. In Serbia, the political faction which rejected market reform was the political victor. This faction used nationalism as an instrument for aggressive labour pacification. In Slovenia, the option of gradual market reforms won out. This option offered a ‘voice' to the labour movement."

"Current workplace relations in central and eastern European candidate countries are strongly influenced by the legacy of fragmented workers' interests and at best undeveloped semi-autonomous forms of collective interest representation. In addition, most trade unions have been unable to develop adequate strategies to cope with the pressures of radical marketisation and to forge collective identities. In this environment the mechanical implementation of social dialogue institutions could trigger opposition from the trade unions, conflicts between unions and works councils in companies where autonomous trade unions exist, and even serious damage to the unions. The social dialogue institutions will only have the desired effects in CEE companies if they are developed on the basis of trade unions that have been strengthened, or even, in the case of non-unionised companies, created. This article draws on empirical research into the operation of trade unions and works councils in the CEE countries, in particular Hungary and Slovenia. "