Social Dialogue and Industrial Conflict

1
Social Dialogue and Industrial Conflict

• Seminar 2

2
Structure of seminar

• Tripartism and bipartism in the new member states
• The end of social peace?
• The role of conflict in society
• The EU and ILO view of labour rights - Social
  Charters and Conventions
• Case studies of real life industrial disputes

3
1. Tripartism and Bipartism in industrial
relations

• The role of tripartism as a mechanism of
  transition management
• The failure to develop bipartite and sectoral
  level bargaining structures
• Mechanisms of conciliation and conflict resolution

4
Social dialogue in the new member states

• Consultations between the State and the social
  partners, within tripartite structures which have
  helped to maintain a degree of social consensus,
  concerning the reforms carried out during the
  first years of transition.
• However, this tripartite dialogue has not led to
  large-scale participation of the social partners
  mainly a top-down process.
• Consequently, the autonomous social dialogue and
  collective bargaining have not been considered a
  priority a weakness reflected at undertaking
  and sector levels.

5

• At undertaking level, and particularly among
  private-sector SMEs, forms of social dialogue or
  solid industrial relations are still lacking.
• Negligible number of sectoral collective
  agreements reflects the weakness of the social
  partners, particularly the employer
  organisations.
• In general, neither civil servants nor the public
  sector (health, education, transport,
  communications, science and research, for
  example), where significant strikes have
  occurred, have any collective agreements.

6
2.The end of social peace?

• - growing social polarisation of CEE societies
• - disappointment of mass expectations of
  material benefits that capitalism would bring
• - disappointment intensified by the direct
  comparison with new European neighbours
• - evidence of industrial protest in the
  Accession States- popular realisation that the
  costs of transition have been unevenly carried
• - privatisation is seen as largely based on
  theft of public property
• - the distribution of social rewards and benefits
  is increasingly seen as unfair

7

• A recent analysis of labour disputes in four
  Eastern European countries (Hungary, Poland,
  Slovakia and Slovenia) suggests-
• it is not clear yet whether the fairly
  peaceful character of industrial relations in
  central and eastern Europe can be maintained in
  the future.
• (A. Toth and L. Neumann, 2003. Labour dispute
  settlement in four central and eastern European
  countries. European Foundation for the
  Improvement of Living and Working Conditions,
  Dublin. At http//www.eiro.eurofound.eu.int/2003/
  01/study/index.html.)

8

• ... 'unavoidable major reforms in the public
  services are still to be carried out in all of
  the countries considered'.
• ... such reforms, 'might lead to the further
  radicalization of public service trade unions',
  an area in which trade unions in CEE are again
  actively recruiting.

9

• ...'a more aggressive trade union strategy, which
  would seek the redistribution of the benefits of
  productivity gains in the context of employees'
  expectations related to accession to the EU
  (Toth and Neumann)

10

• - collective bargaining is still weakly
  developed and general decline in trade union
  membership... But
• contamination legacy of trade unions as part
  of the previous system is potentially being
  overcome in the new context of European
  enlargement
• - In a few areas trade unions are showing the
  first signs of new members being recruited and a
  renewed class combativeness and class
  consciousness (although less so in the Baltic
  States than elsewhere in CEE)

11
3.The role of conflict in society

• Strike action by trade unions is viewed by
  national governments in Central and Eastern
  Europe from a strict policy perspective as an
  implicitly or explicitly negative phenomenon
  which might threaten to destabilise the necessary
  processes of economic reconstruction.
• A different view of conflict..

12
Lewis A. Coser, The Functions of Social Conflict,
(Glencoe Free Press, 1956).

• Inopen societies, conflict, which aims at the
  resolution of tension between antagonists, is
  likely to have stabilizing and integrative
  functions for the relationship.
• By permitting immediate and direct expression of
  rival claims, such social systems are able to
  readjust their structures by eliminating the
  sources of dissatisfaction

13

• These systems avail themselves, through the
  toleration and institutionalization of conflict,
  of an important stabilizing mechanism
• A flexible society benefits from conflict because
  such behavior, by helping to create and modify
  norms, assures its continuance under changed
  conditions.
• Such mechanism for readjustment of norms is
  hardly available to rigid systems by suppressing
  conflict, the latter smother a useful warning
  signal, thereby maximizing the danger of
  catastrophic breakdown.

14
the necessary culture of conflict (Kohl)

• Industrial conflict strikes - are the ultimate
  expression - not simply the failure to resolve
  conflicts in at the workplace, but - an
  acceptable, even necessary articulation of
  emerging interest-based collective bargaining in
  the new market economies.
• Historically, in capitalist economies, workers
  conditions have only been improved through long
  and sustained struggle by organised labour
  including strike actions.

15

• The disruption of the surface norms of social
  peace may reveal a more troubled and conflictual
  underlying reality.
• Labour conflicts can also visibly expose the
  underlying assumptions and attitudes towards
  labour on the part of governments and key elites.
• The legal regulation of industrial conflict
  precisely locates the centre of gravity of
  effective labour rights the arena of
  post-communist reconstruction.
• It is an arena has been vacated by the European
  Union not part of EU acquis.

16
Free collective bargaining

• Withdrawal of labour in order to pressure
  employers into conceding labours demands is a
  democratic right.
• Industrial action by employees can be viewed as
  intrinsic to the promotion of free collective
  bargaining and more generally as an integral part
  of democratic transformation itself.

17
4. The EU view of labour rights - Social Charters

• Community and the Member States defined
  fundamental social rights on the basis of two
  texts-
• the European Social Charter signed at Turin on 18
  October 1961 and
• the 1989 Community Charter of the Fundamental
  Social Rights of Workers
• These fundamental social rights mainly concern
  employment, living and working conditions, social
  protection, social dialogue and the combating of
  exclusion
• But remuneration, the right of association, and
  the right to strike or lock out are not addressed
  at Community level.
• These issues are addressed in the non-binding
  Revised European Social Charter for Fundamental
  Social Rights 2000 but this does not create
  enforceable rights

18
Revised European Social Charter for Fundamental
Social Rights 2000

• CHAPTER IV, SOLIDARITY
• Article 27
• Workers' right to information and consultation
  within the undertaking
• Workers or their representatives must, at the
  appropriate levels, be guaranteed information and
  consultation in good time in the cases and under
  the conditions provided for by Community law and
  national laws and practices.

19
Article 28 Right of collective bargaining and
action Workers and employers, or their
respective organisations, have, in accordance
with Community law and national laws and
practices, the right to negotiate and conclude
collective agreements at the appropriate levels
and, in cases of conflicts of interest, to take
collective action to defend their interests,
including strike action.
20
The European Court of Human Rights

• Wilson, Palmer and Others -v- UK 2002
• the essence of a voluntary system of collective
  bargaining is that it must be possible for a
  trade union .to take steps including, if
  necessary, organising industrial action with a
  view to persuading the employer to enter into
  collective bargaining.

21
ILO as a standards setter in labour and
employment conditions

• All EU member states have ratified both the main
  ILO Conventions on trade union rights (87 and 98)
• In general, trade union rights are respected in
  law and practice in the 15 long-standing EU
  member states. However, in particular in the new
  member countries violations of trade union rights
  take place, and labour legislation does not
  always conform to the ILO Conventions.

22
5. Case studies of real life industrial
disputes in Lithuania

• Detailed case studies of law in action.
• The pressures of restrictive labour law
• Four actions-
• Marijampole insurrection
• Anti-liberalisation protests
• The Vilnius Bus workers dispute 1999-2000.
• Police officers trade union protest

23
1. The Marijampole insurrection

• Spring of 2001, over 600 Marijampole county
  farmers together with workers from the local
  sugar beet factory, plus several hundred farmers
  from the Suvalkija region, blocked off the main
  Via Baltica road to Poland.
• fears for the future of the Marijampoles Cukrus
  sugar factory - demands of the protestors
  included the firing of the agriculture minister
  and the retention of their jobs.

24
Marijampole

• protestors were angered by a decision made by the
  government to stop issuing price guarantees for
  sugar, and dissatisfied by what they perceived to
  be a too small sugar production quota for
  Marijampoles Cukrus.
• Their ultimate fear was that these cutbacks were
  merely a prelude to the destruction of the sugar
  plant which would, in turn, have disastrous
  knock-on effects on the regional sugar beet
  growers.

25
Marijampole

• Danish foreign investor Danisco Sugar. controls
  all four national sugar factories, leaving the
  weaker parts of the restructured indigenous sugar
  industry at a severe and possibly terminal
  disadvantage

26
Corporate social responsibility?

• Danisco company statement
• It is paramount to Danisco Sugar that the sugar
  beet farmers conditions are now safeguarded in
  the same constructive and open spirit which also
  characterises the relationship with the sugar
  beet farmers Denmark, Sweden and Germany. Danisco
  Sugar will cooperate with the beet farmers on
  creating the basis for a rational,
  future-oriented sugar industry which will be
  competitive also after Lithuanias accession to
  the EU

27
Government response to protests

• The normal government response from whichever
  party has been in power, has been to quell such
  protests by giving some financial assistance to
  farmers, and by promising to give more in the
  future.
• Such promises were often reneged upon, stirring
  up new resentment and protests, resulting in yet
  further buy-offs.
• During ten years of independence, billions of
  litas have been spent quelling simmering
  conflicts.
• However, with the additional elements of foreign
  investors and EU accession requirements entering
  into the equation, the options available to
  governments have narrowed considerably.

28
Forcible suppression

• Initially, after negotiations with police at the
  border, the farmers allowed 80 haulers to pass.
• Later, furious truck drivers, waiting at the
  border in queues which had now grown to ten
  kilometres, broke the blockade and drove through
  the farmers lines.
• As the blockade was in turn extended by the
  protesters without limit of time, police special
  forces stationed at the border to prevent further
  disturbances, moved in to clear the roads and
  forest tracks.

29
the smell of gunpowder

• The culmination was violent confrontation and
  sustained clashes, producing shocking scenes
  relayed on Lithuanian television, of police
  truncheon blows being delivered to the heads of
  unarmed protestors.
• A reflective article on these events noted that,
  we are step by step approaching social
  unrest...although the conflict soon died down,
  there was a smell of gunpowder in the air

30
Analysis of significance of Marijampole

• This dispute was primarily a defensive action on
  the part of a few hundred local producers and
  workers, attempting to protect the key local
  employment resource in the face of threatened
  restructuring in a region of acutely high
  unemployment (the highest in Lithuania).
• Whatever surface ripples it created at the time
  have quickly died down. Yet it saw a mobilization
  of communal interests which produced a remarkable
  coalescence of labour and community identities.
• The Marijampole events, although restricted in
  scale, represent a model of destabilising
  localised insurrection which may be assuming an
  increasingly desperate character and can often be
  only ended by physical force.

31
2. The anti-liberalisation protests

• Organised workers reactions to extensive
  liberalisation measures designed to remove their
  existing, or residual levels of social protection
  
• In 2000, Liberal and New Union centre-right
  government published a resolution spelling out
  its intentions to liberalise the labour market

32
The liberalisation measures

• Approved typical form of an employment contract
  to be recommended but not compulsory
• all restrictions in concluding any type of civil
  contracts between natural persons as well as
  between natural and legal persons to be lifted
• restrictions on temporary employment contracts to
  be gradually phased out
• statutory requirements for an employer to inform
  the social insurance commission (Sodra) on the
  employment of a person on the same day and
  dismissal from employment within three working
  days to be no longer applicable
• mandatory working time records no longer to be
  kept

33
The liberalisation measures

• requirement that employees have employment
  identification documents to be waived
• compensation for public servants and other
  employees made unemployed as provided by existing
  legislation to be reduced in amount
• employers no longer required to consult trade
  unions before making workers redundant, where the
  worker is a member of a trade union
• if there is an interruption to production and the
  employer wishes to temporarily redeploy a worker
  but the employee refuses to accept redeployment,
  the employer obliged to pay only one third of the
  minimum wage rate instead of the full statutory
  minimum rate
• workers who receive training at employers
  expense to compensate the employer if changing
  employment

34
The protest actions

• Protests involved small quiet gatherings of
  perhaps a dozen or so smartly dressed men and
  women, standing with placards in dignified order
  outside MPs homes.
• Protesters placards - Dear Neighbours - We
  elected your neighbour Rolanda Pavilionis but he
  voted in the Seimas for measures that will make
  you a slave without rights.
• We did not elect you to vote for our enslavement
  - We did not elect you to vote to remove our
  rights and jobs.

35
A symbolic protest indicative of trade union
weakness

• Despite their participation in national
  tripartite structures, the trade unions were
  insufficiently powerful as social partners to
  resist the imposition of significant legislative
  reforms which undermined their position.
• Failure to resolve this conflict within
  established corporatist structures of conflict
  resolution. This led to the substitution of
  nonrealistic conflict targets that were in a
  sense secondary MPs homes picketed.
• Thus, the conflict itself took a largely symbolic
  form, being a political action by trade unions,
  unable to mobilize sufficient parliamentary or
  industrial support to halt what was seen as a
  fundamental attack on working peoples rights.
• As a conflict, it could be easily contained.

36
3. Police trade union protest

• Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania, and
  the 1991 Law on Trade Unions recognise the right
  of workers and employees to form and join trade
  unions. The Law on Trade Unions extends this
  right to employees of the police and the armed
  forces via statutes regulating their activities.
• However, the Law on the Regulation of Collective
  Disputes of 1992 does not allow withdrawal of
  labour by employees involved in law enforcement
  and state security
• It shall be prohibited to call a strike
  within the structures of internal affairs,
  national defence and national security... The
  demands of the employees of such services shall
  be considered by the Government of the Republic
  of Lithuania.
• Rank and file police complained of low wages, as
  well as lack of funds for basic equipment,
  including replacement uniforms and petrol for
  vehicles.

37
Union of Police Constables and Police Employees

• Six thousand employees were dismissed from the
  force over a period of years, and it was against
  this background of rising frustration that the
  police officers trade union, the Union of Police
  Constables and Police Employees, was established.
• Protest action- a lunchtime walk through
  Gedimino Prospect, the main thoroughfare of the
  capital, by around 400 policemen and women in
  full uniform, supported by firebrigade
  colleagues, culminating in the handing over of a
  petition listing their grievances to the Seimas

38
A partial success

• The trade union now claims to have recruited
  about 1,000 of the capitals 2,500 police and
  some 5,000 out of the 11,000 for the whole of
  Lithuania. If correct, these figures represent
  the highest trade union density of any sector of
  the workforce
• The public impact of these demonstrations,
  especially of the first, was sufficiently great
  to produce a substantial new budgetary
  allocation. It also brought to a halt the ongoing
  dismissals of police officers and the recognition
  of the police trade union as social partner for
  purposes of collective bargaining.

39
4. The Vilnius Bus workers dispute 1999-2000.

• An illustration of repressive anti-strike law in
  action.
• Implications for labour standards and labour
  rights in the new member states
• The missing acquis a failure of EU competence

40
Law on the Regulation of Collective Disputes
(1992, amended 1994, 1999)

• Article 1 Strike - a voluntary refusal of the
  employees of one or a few enterprises or their
  groups to temporarily carry out their work if the
  collective dispute is not settled or the decision
  reached by reconciliation committee, Labour
  Arbitration or the Court of Arbitration is not
  carried out.

41
Article 10 Law on the Regulation of Collective
Disputes

• Where trade union members constitute the majority
  of employees of an enterprise they have the right
  to call a strike in accordance with the rules of
  procedure in the trade unions statutes.
• The decision to initiate a strike must be reached
  in a secret ballot and endorsed to be by a
  two-thirds majority vote of employees.

42
Article 10, Section 6 'Declaration of Strikes'

• 21 day notice of intention to strike required in
  railway, city public transport, civil aviation,
  communications, and power engineering enterprises
  (with the exception of electric power
  enterprises), as well as in medical and
  pharmaceutical institutions, food, water,
  sewerage and waste disposal, and oil processing
  enterprises, and in enterprises of uninterrupted
  production...

43
Article 10, Section 6 'Declaration of Strikes'

• In the previous list of enterprises the right to
  peacefully persuade fellow employees to take part
  (via picketing) is limited.
• Strikers are required to provide minimum amount
  of conditions (services) necessary to satisfy the
  immediate (vital) needs of society.

44
Article 13 Lawfulness of a Strike

• In the event that there are particularly
  important reasons, the court shall have the right
  to postpone a strike which has not yet started
  for a period of thirty days, or to stop, for the
  same period, a strike which has already started.

45
The Vilnius Bus Workers Dispute

• Dispute over delayed payment of wages and
  reduction of overtime work payments (April 1999).
• Employees balloted as required and employer given
  notice of intention of warning strikes of two
  hours (July 1999).

46
Five days before the first warning strike,
the Vilnius municipal authority ruled that it
required a minimum service of 70 per cent of the
normal transport provision.
47
The Dispute drags on...

• Strike postponed while negotiations continue
  through summer and autumn of 1999. Basic issues
  remain in dispute.
• Warning strike again called, to be followed by a
  one-day stoppage (27 January 2002).
• Vilnius municipal authority threatens to apply to
  the court to have the strike declared unlawful.

48
.and drags on

• Strike postponed to 15 March 2000.
• Employee wages again not paid on time and again
  workforce decided to strike 18 May 2000.
• 17 May Vilnius district court ruling that the
  strike should be postponed for thirty days.
• 18 May one day work-stoppage supported by 500
  workers.

49
.and drags on

• 26 May 2000 the Mayor of the Municipality refuses
  to withdraw legal action to have the strike
  declared unlawful
• Vilnius District Court on 4 July 2000, ruled
  strike of 18 May was unlawful.
• Trade unions duly appeal decision of lower court.
• Court of Appeals annuls the lower court ruling
  September 2000.

50
Had the strike been upheld as unlawful...

• The trade union would have been liable for
  damages to the employer as a result of 'unlawful'
  industrial action.
• Under Article 13, Section 3 - in cases when the
  employer is not compensated for all losses, the
  strikers as individuals may be subject to
  material liability in accordance with labour
  laws.

51
Complaint to ILO by strikers trade union the
Motor Transport Workers Federation (MTWF)

• MTWF union lodges formal complaijnt with the ILO,
  alleging violation of core Conventions 87 and 98
  - Freedom of Association and Protection of the
  Right to Organise Convention, 1948 (No.87) and
  the Right to Organise and Collective Bargaining
  Convention, 1949 (No.98).

52
ILO Committee on Freedom of Association opinion

• Public transport could not be considered an
  essential service in the strict sense of the
  term, but it was a public service of primary
  importance.
• Therefore the requirement of provision of a
  minimum service in the event of a strike could be
  justified.

53
ILO Committee on Freedom of Association opinion

• However ILO Committee on Freedom of Association
  view was that the determination of the level of
  this minimum should be a matter for a careful
  exchange of views involving the representatives
  of the employees as well as the authorities.

54
ILO Committee on Freedom of Association opinion

• The ILO Committee therefore regrets that the
  70 per cent minimum service established by
  Decision (of the Municipality) was taken without
  any consultation with the social partners
  concerned.

55
ILO Committee on Freedom of Association opinion

• The Committee finds itself obliged to conclude
  that, in this case, the requirement to ensure 70
  per cent of the services provided cannot be
  considered to be a truly minimum service and that
  the likely result of such an imposition would be
  to render the exercise of the right to strike
  ineffective in practice.

56
ILO Committee on Freedom of Association opinion
on Article 13

• The ILO Committee noted that Article 13 Law on
  the Regulation of Collective Disputes gave courts
  the right to declare strikes unlawful or postpone
  strikes due to especially important reasons.
• Despite earlier correspondence with the
  Lithuanian government, the Committee observed a
  lack of clarity in the legislation as to what
  these especially important reasons might be.

57
ILO Committee on Freedom of Association opinion

• The Committee considers that any systematic use
  of Article 13 in order to postpone legitimate
  strike action would be contrary to the principles
  of freedom of association. Given that the
  unclear drafting of Article 13 could give rise to
  such abuse, the Committee requests the Government
  to consider amending this provision so as to
  ensure that it is not used to restrict the right
  to strike in practice beyond what is permissible
  under accepted principles of freedom of
  association.

58
ILO Committee of Experts on the Application of
Conventions and Recommendations (CEACR)

• CEACR asked to examine legislative aspects of
  case-
• CEACR reiterates while the authorities may
  establish a system of minimum service in sectors
  such as public transport, it must be a genuinely
  minimum service, that is one limited to meeting
  the basic needs of the population while
  maintaining the effectiveness of strike
  pressure.

59
ILO expert comments on draft of new Labour Code
(2000)

• even a requirement for a majority of the workers
  may in some cases excessively hinder the right
  to strike.
• stringent requirements for conciliation
  procedures in the event of a dispute might result
  in the period of notification becoming a
  deterrent to the exercise of the right to
  strike.

60
ILO expert comments on draft of new Labour Code

• the restrictions are contrary to the provisions
  of the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles
  and Rights at Work 1998.
• Lithuanian authorities strongly urged to
  revisit the Labour Code in draft form to ensure
  that fundamental rights are not exposed to
  possibility of inappropriate restrictions.

61
New Labour Code (2002) - concessions to ILO
concerns

• the unilateral determination of essential
  (vital) needs is modified-
• Article 80, Section 2 allows determination of
  minimum conditions (services) by tripartite
  consultation ie, having regard to the opinion
  of the Tripartite Council or by the executive
  institution of a municipality upon consultation
  with the parties to the collective dispute.

62
New Labour Code (2002) - concessions to ILO
concerns

• Article 77, Section 2 Notification period of
  intention to strike - reduced from standard
  fourteen days in the draft code, to seven in the
  final adopted version of Labour Code.
• Article 77, Section 4 Notification period of
  intention to strike inselected industries defined
  as essential - reduced from previous twenty-one
  days to fourteen.

63
New Labour Code - Restriction on strike action
in essential industries and services remains

• Article 80, Section 2 - minimum conditions
  necessary for meeting the immediate (vital) needs
  of the society must be ensured for industries
  deemed to be essential - list specified in
  Article 77, Section 4-

64
New Labour Code - Extensive list of essential
industries remains unaltered

• Article 77 Section 4 - railway and public
  transport, civil aviation, communications and
  energy enterprises, health care and
  pharmaceutical institutions, food, water, sewage
  and waste disposal enterprises, oil refineries,
  enterprises with continuous production cycle and
  other enterprises cessation of work in which
  would result in grave and hazardous consequences
  for the community or human life and health.

65
New Labour Code (2002) - Power of judicial
interference remains unaltered

• Article 81, Section 4 - if a strike will affect
  the provision of minimum conditions (services)
  required for meeting the essential (vital) needs
  of the society and this may endanger human life,
  health and safety a proposed strike may be
  cancelled by the courts for thirty days by the
  court, or suspended for the same period if it is
  already in progress.

66
New Labour Code (2002) - financial penalties
for unlawful industrial action remain (in part)

• Article 85. Liability - financial penalties
  remain against trade unions and strike
  committees, for industrial action deemed
  unlawful.
• individual strikers will no longer directly incur
  material liability.

67
New Labour Code (2002) - High voting threshold
for lawful strike action remains unaltered

• Article 77. Declaration of a Strike - The
  required two thirds majority of enterprise
  employees voting in favour of strike action
  remains.

68
New Labour Code (2002) - restrictions on right to
strike at sectoral or wider level

• To call a strike at higher than enterprise level,
  the trade unions must first, exercise all the
  procedural requirements, including possible
  binding arbitration, regarding strikes at the
  level of the enterprise.
• Should a single employer fulfil the requirements
  of a collective bargaining agreement the strike
  could be prohibited.

69
European Commission Regular Report on Lithuanias
Progress towards Accession (2002)

• there are concerns that legislation on union
  rights is not duly enforced in all cases
• European Commission, Regular Report on
  Lithuanias Progress towards Accession, COM
  (2002) 700 final, p.29.

70
Summary

• New Labour Code reiterates most of the
  restrictive provisions of the the Law on the
  Regulation of Collective Disputes which it
  replaces.
• The concerns of ILO, apart from minor
  modifications, as well European Court
  determinations and the as spirit of EU Charter of
  Fundamental Rights not acknowledged in the new
  Labour Code.

71
Wider Implications

• It is unlikely that the new Labour Code will
  provide opportunities for the articulation of
  collective employee demands, without significant
  improvements in the effective legal right to
  strike
• Restrictions on strike action, and on labour
  rights in general, apart from attracting
  international attention, may pose a threat to
  longer term social cohesion by undermining
  opportunities to develop social dialogue in new
  post-accession Lithuania.

72
Level of Politicisation
High
Medium
Low
Low Medium High
Level of Intensity
73
Labour Law of Latvia, August 2004

• Section 22. Approval of a Collective Agreement
• (1) In order for a collective agreement entered
  into by an undertaking to be valid, its approval
  at a general meeting (conference) of employees is
  required.
• (2) The collective agreement shall be approved by
  a simple majority vote at a general meeting at
  which at least half the employees of the relevant
  undertaking participate.
• (3) If it is impossible to convene a general
  meeting of employees due to the large number of
  employees employed by an undertaking or due to
  the nature of work organisation, the collective
  agreement shall be approved by a simple majority
  vote at a conference of employee representatives
  at which at least half of the employee
  representatives participate.

74
Conciliation mechanism

• Section 25. Settlement of Disputes in a
  Conciliation Commission
• (1) Disputes regarding rights and interests which
  arise from the collective agreement relations or
  which are related to such agreement shall be
  settled by a conciliation commission. A
  conciliation commission shall be established by
  the parties to a collective agreement, both
  authorising an equal number of their
  representatives.
• (2) In case of a dispute, the parties to the
  collective agreement shall draw up a report
  regarding the differences of opinion and not
  later than within a three-day period submit it to
  the conciliation commission. The conciliation
  commission shall examine the report within a
  seven-day period.
• (3) The conciliation commission shall take a
  decision by agreement. The decision shall be
  binding on both parties to the collective
  agreement and it shall have the validity of a
  collective agreement.

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Strike Law of Latvia 2002

• Chapter III Declaration of Strike
• Section 11.
• (1) A trade union shall take a decision regarding
  the declaration of a strike at a general meeting
  of the members thereof convened in accordance
  with the procedures prescribed by the articles of
  association of the relevant trade union and in
  which at least three quarters of the members of
  such trade union participate. A decision shall be
  taken if the three quarters of the members of the
  relevant trade union who are present have voted
  in favour for it. The process and the results of
  the voting shall be recorded.

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• (2) If it is impossible to convene a general
  meeting of the relevant trade union due to the
  large number of the members or due to the
  specific nature of the work organisation, the
  decision regarding the declaration of a strike
  shall be taken at a meeting of authorised
  representatives of members of the trade union
  convened in accordance with the procedures
  prescribed by the articles of association of the
  relevant trade union and in which at least three
  quarters of the authorised representatives of
  members of such trade union participate. A
  decision shall be taken if three quarters of the
  authorised representatives of the members of the
  relevant trade union who are present have voted
  in favour of it. The process and the results of
  the voting shall be recorded.

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The three-quarters rule

• (3) If a trade union or authorised
  representatives of the members of a trade union
  referred to in Paragraph two of this Section
  (hereinafter authorised representatives of the
  members of a trade union) take a decision
  regarding the declaration of a strike on behalf
  of all employees of the relevant undertaking
  (including those employees who are not members of
  the relevant trade union), the trade union or the
  authorised representatives of the members of the
  trade union must ensure that the decisions
  referred to in Paragraphs one and two of this
  Section are endorsed by three quarters of the
  number of employees of the relevant undertaking
  such support shall be endorsed by the relevant
  minutes.

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Latvia Trade Union Rights Violations
(International Confederation of Free Trade Unions
Annual Report 2004)

• A union must have at least 50 members, which is
  too high by ILO standards.
• The state police are still banned from
  organising, and numerous requests to remove this
  ban have been ignored.
• Strike limitations - the right to strike is
  recognised, but the limitations contained in the
  1998 law on strikes remain in place. A high
  quorum is required to vote on a strike,
  pre-strike procedures are too long, solidarity
  strikes are prohibited and strikes must not be
  called to protest at the government's economic
  and social policies.

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• Collective bargaining. The law on collective
  bargaining does not set any time limit on
  negotiations, thus allowing employers to drag
  them out indefinitely.
• The government does not promote the formation of
  strong and independent trade unions as the basis
  for stable social partnership and social
  dialogue. Opposition to the formation of trade
  unions is strongest in the private sector, and in
  some enterprises trade unions are banned.
• Collective bargaining and information and
  consultation rights are not respected in
  practice. For example, in Jurmala SIA the
  management of the enterprise Jurmalas
  Namsaimnieks consistently avoided conclusion of a
  collective agreement.

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By way of conclusion (Kohl and Platzer, 2003)

• with poorly developed social dialogue and
  inadequate structures for effective labour
  relations at vital levels, dangers can tend to
  snowball through growing poverty, exclusion and
  political radicalisation.
• Social processes running out of control in an
  inadequate civil society then inevitably generate
  repercussions in the form of Euroscepticism, the
  rejection of European unification or a general
  aversion to politics.