Europejska Konwencja o Ochronie Praw Czlowieka, ROLA ONA W ZAKRESIE PRZECIWDZIAŁANIA MASOWYM NARUSZENIOM PRAW CZŁOWIEKA, OCHRONA PRAW CZŁOWIEKA, MIS
Europejska Polityka Społeczna, Międzynarodowa polityka społeczna
Europejski Kodeks Dobrej Administracji, Administracja UŁ, Administracja I rok, Nauka administracji, Nauka administracji, inne
Europejska strategia bezp. - R. Kuźniar [streszczenie], Bezpieczeństwo narodowe, strategia bezpieczeństwa narodowego
Europejskie systemy opieki, Resocjalizacja, Współczesne systemy resocjalizacji
europejski kodeks dobrej administracji, Prawo, Prawo administracyjne
Europejska Broń Biała, Szukacze skarbów, Noże i broń biała
Europejski Kodeks Dobrej Administracji, ▬ Studia Administracja Publiczna, Kodeksy
EUROPEJSKI TRYBUNAŁ PRAW CZŁOWIEKA w pytaniach i odpowiedzach, Prawo, Prawo człowieka
Evaluation of Waste Tire Devulcanization Technologies, CHEMIA, chemia materiałów
European Journal of Industrial Relations-2011-Bernaciak-365-80, artykuły, papers
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]//-->European Journal of IndustrialRelationsEmployee welfare and restructuring in the public sector: Evidence fromPoland and SerbiaMagdalena Bernaciak, Anil Duman and Vera ScepanovicEuropean Journal of Industrial Relations2011 17: 365 originally published online 7September 2011DOI: 10.1177/0959680111420697The online version of this article can be found at:Published by:Additional services and information forEuropean Journal of Industrial Relationscan be found at:Email Alerts:Subscriptions:Reprints:Permissions:Citations:>>Version of Record- Nov 28, 2011OnlineFirst Version of Record- Sep 7, 2011What is This?Downloaded fromejd.sagepub.comby Anna Dom on October 30, 2012420697EJD17410.1177/0959680111420697Bernaciaket al.European Journal of Industrial RelationsArticleEmployee welfare andrestructuring in the publicsector: Evidence from Polandand SerbiaMagdalena Bernaciak, Anil Dumanand Vera Šc´epanovic´Central European University, Budapest, HungaryEuropean Journal ofIndustrial Relations17(4) 365–380© The Author(s) 2011Reprints and permission: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.navDOI: 10.1177/0959680111420697ejd.sagepub.comAbstractLabour in Central-Eastern Europe is widely regarded as a uniformly weak actor. We challengethis view, and explore the conditions under which CEE labour can play an active role in the welfarereform process. We draw on evidence from education and health care in Poland and Serbia, andshow that public sector unions have largely retained their ability to prevent major restructuringand to defend employment-related privileges of their constituencies. The unions’ resilience isexplained by the fact that the public sector in these countries remains sheltered from competitivepressures by delayed privatization, and by the extensive structural and associational powerenjoyed by public sector employees.KeywordsCentral-Eastern Europe, public sector, trade unions, welfare state restructuringIntroductionPost-communist transition presented countries in Central-Eastern Europe (CEE) withgrave socio-economic imbalances, requiring them simultaneously to address multipleand novel issues such as privatization and restructuring, pension reforms, poverty andunemployment. Much of the literature (Bohle and Greskovits, 2004; Ost and Crowley,2001) has argued that neither the new institutional environment nor the legacy of social-ism offered a fertile ground for union inclusion in policy formulation or for the develop-ment of Western-style social partnerships, such as those depicted in this issue in the caseof Western Europe. Similarly, newly instituted tripartite bodies have been but a window-dress to legitimize top-down policy choices (Avdagic, 2005; Ost, 2000). In the light ofCorresponding author:Vera Šcepanovic, Political Science Department, Central European University, Nádor utca 9, 1051 Budapest,´´Hungary.Email: scepanovic_vera@ceu-budapest.eduDownloaded fromejd.sagepub.comby Anna Dom on October 30, 2012366European Journal of Industrial Relations 17(4)these claims, one could expect that CEE unions will find it hard to actively shape thewelfare state restructuring agenda.In this article, we challenge the view of CEE labour as a uniformly weak actor andexplore under what conditions it can play an active role in the welfare reform process.To address this issue, we analyse activities of labour organizations in the public sector,which retain considerable influence on the course and the degree of restructuring. Wefind union leverage to be particularly high in preserving employment-related privileges,with the majority of ‘politically constructed property rights’ (Schwartz, 2001) largelyintact 20 years after the systemic transformation. We argue that the strength of publicsector unions comes in part from the very nature of these sectors, as their employeesderive their income streams mainly from regulations enforced by the government andare thus not subject to the disciplining forces of the market. Moreover, they enjoy a highdegree of structural power, stemming from their ability to withhold the provision ofessential services, as well as associational power, derived from relatively high unioniza-tion rates (Silver, 2005). However, we also observe that the effectiveness of these pre-rogatives can be limited by government decisions and a negative public response tounion actions.We demonstrate the above logic with empirical evidence from the health care andeducation sectors in Poland and Serbia. The two countries differ significantly in terms oftheir trade unionism legacies.Solidarnośćwas among the key reformist forces in Polandand participated in the re-shaping of the country’s social and industrial policy after theformer regime collapsed, even if the outcomes of these reforms were often perceived asundermining workers’ welfare. Only in the second half of the 2000s did the union turn torebuilding its membership base (Ost, 2005). By contrast, in Serbia the post-communistgovernment under Milošević postponed reforms at the expense of deteriorating livingstandards, and continued the tradition of transmission-belt unionism from the socialistera. In the 2000s, when the country finally set on the path of democratization and reform,it inherited an overblown, under-funded public sector, with the major trade union confed-eration tainted by the legacy of nationalism and the ‘oppositional’ union having littleexperience in dealing with the government. The countries’ post-transition paths conse-quently diverged along similar lines. Poland was a CEE forerunner in privatization; italso attracted large amounts of foreign direct investment (FDI) both before and after EUaccession in 2004. The Serbian economy suffered heavily during the Balkan wars of1990–1999, and subsequent privatization and efforts to attract FDI have so far yieldedmodest results. However, our studies show that despite the past and present differences,both Polish and Serbian public sector unions have been capable of defending their con-stituencies’ privileges and preventing large-scale restructuring.Our findings are based mainly on the analysis of press releases and union materials.We also conducted eight interviews with health care and education union representativesin the two countries. In addition, we reviewed sectoral collective agreements concludedin Serbian health care and education since 1999, tracing their evolution over time andcomparing their terms to those of the Labour Code and collective agreements in othersectors.Our article first outlines broad patterns of welfare state restructuring in Poland andSerbia and discusses past reforms in health care and education. Against this background,Downloaded fromejd.sagepub.comby Anna Dom on October 30, 2012Bernaciak et al.367we present unions’ efforts to influence policy in the two sectors. The last section accountsfor their resilience to restructuring processes and discusses long-term implications forunion mobilization patterns in CEE.Welfare states in transition: Polish and SerbianexperiencesWelfare provisions existed in both Poland and Serbia well before the 1990s. Undersocialism, formal employment was the main channel of access to social services (Szalai,2003), and as the system was premised upon full employment, most of the populationhad access to basic benefits. Education, health care, pensions, social security and childbenefits were centrally administered. After 1989, most areas of social protection under-went substantial changes. The transformation of CEE welfare states was much moreextensive than the changes that took place in Western Europe during the same period, asentire new areas of social policy had to be introduced, while others had to be modified tomeet new challenges.All transition countries faced severe financial and fiscal pressures that put tough con-straints on welfare spending (Huber and Stephens, 2001). The severity varied acrossCEE countries: at one extreme, Slovenia maintained spending levels comparable to thoseof some West European countries; at the other, the Baltic states imposed drastic cutbacks(Bohle and Greskovits, 2007). The Polish ‘shock therapy’, an austerity package involvingstabilization and liberalization measures and extensive privatization, initially reducedPoland’s GDP by almost 20 percent, but the economy rebounded by 1995 (Kolodko,2000). By contrast, reforms in Serbia proceeded at a much slower pace, with frequentchanges and policy reversals. Privatization was caught in a stop-go pattern and in 2000,publicly owned enterprises still accounted for more than 50 percent of all employmentand around 30 percent of GDP (Lukić, 2002). Wars and international sanctions added tothe economic difficulties and Serbia’s GDP shrunk to 50 percent of the 1989 levels, withvery slow recovery starting in mid-2000s (WDI, 2004).Developments in both countries were marked by the changing nature of social needs.Unemployment in Poland peaked in July 1994 at 16.9 percent; after a slight decline at theend of 1990s, it stood over 10 percent throughout most of the 2000s (GUS, 2010). Thesituation was even worse in Serbia, where the official unemployment rate reached 30percent in the mid-2000s (UNECE, 2005) – though Labour Force Survey figures show alower rate, around 20 percent for most of the 2000s decreasing to 15 percent in 2008,which is a reflection of the extent of the ‘grey economy’. Initially, unemployment benefitsin both countries were generous and paid for a relatively extended time; but they weresoon cut back, and the replacement rates were significantly reduced. Social assistance inboth countries is means-tested. While in Poland thsee benefits are administered locally,in Serbia they are managed centrally and subject to complicated eligibility criteria. Therates are low in both countries, and a large part of population is reportedly left out(Horibayashi, 2004). In Serbia, less than 2 percent of GDP is spent on social assistance,and a recent World Bank report highlighted a worryingly low coverage rate, with only7.5 percent in the poorest quintile of the income distribution and 27 percent of theextreme poor receiving benefits (World Bank, 2009).Downloaded fromejd.sagepub.comby Anna Dom on October 30, 2012368European Journal of Industrial Relations 17(4)But open unemployment was not the only way in which the plummeting employmentlevels weighed on the public finances. Part of the problem spilled over into the area ofpensions, as large numbers of laid-off workers withdrew from the labour market. InPoland, the indexation of pensions to wages was introduced as early as in 1990 (Muller,1999), and the eligibility conditions for disability and old-age pensions were loosened,encouraging the excess workforce to retire. By the mid-1990s, more than one millionPoles retired ‘abnormally’, before reaching the retirement age (Vanhuysse, 2006).Consequently, the pension system became financially unviable and the country’s policy-makers partially privatized it in 1999 by introducing an obligatory second and a volun-tary third pillar managed by private pension funds (Góra, 2001).Like Poland, Serbia also offered generous disability benefits and had a generally lowretirement age. Given high unemployment rates and a swelling population of pensioners,the contributory pay-as-you-go system is sorely underfunded (Sansier, 2006). Severalrounds of reforms (in 2001, 2003 and 2005) were introduced to make the system morestringent by raising the retirement age and enforcing restrictions on disability criteria. In2006, the government also considered the introduction of a private pension scheme, butthe option remained voluntary for fear of diverting resources from public funds. Despitethe reforms, the system remains unaffordable and the World Bank and the IMF havecalled for further cuts, criticizing the benefit rates set at 60 percent of the average wageas ‘too generous’ (World Bank, 2009).Restructuring health care and educationWhile pensions account for about a third of all government expenditure in Serbia andPoland, health care and education comprise the next biggest spending items (20–25% inboth countries for the two services combined; Szpringer, 2005; World Bank, 2009).However, they are particularly problematic as any down-scaling affects not only thebeneficiaries, but also the sectors’ employees. Poland’s health care went through severalreforms prior to the transition, moving towards decentralized provision by graduallyreducing the power of the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare (Girourard and Imai,2000). Post-1990 reforms continued in the same direction and since 1999, health careservices had been administered by medical entities and professionals contracted byregional health care funds, replaced in 2004 by the centrally managed National HealthFund. Poland introduced mandatory universal health insurance (Filinson et al., 2003),but health-related spending has declined in relative terms since 1995. The system suffersfrom low public approval because of limited access, perceived low quality and a highshare of private financing. The health care employees’ salaries continue to be relativelylow and thus they are largely dissatisfied with the reforms (Domagala et al., 1999).In Serbia, the health care system is under severe fiscal constraints. Although publicspending on health reached 7 percent of GDP, the services require additional investment(WHO, 2009). Especially during the years of economic hardship and sanctions, thequality of health care significantly deteriorated and reforms were delayed. Subsequentreforms in 2002 and 2004–05 modernized the legal framework, allowed private partici-pation in some services (secondary insurance), downsized the package of basic healthcare and introduced extensive co-payments, especially for pharmaceuticals (WorldDownloaded fromejd.sagepub.comby Anna Dom on October 30, 2012 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
