Collective agreements extended

The amendment to the Collective Bargaining Act was passed despite the President’s reservations. Members of parliament approved the amendment in its original wording.

The parliament did not accept any of the president’s comments, including the suggestion that higher-grade collective agreements only be extended to employers that already have a collective agreement in their company or to entrepreneurs employing more than 50 employees. From 1 January 2014 it will once again be possible in Slovakia to extend the binding character of collective agreements to companies that do not approve them. This opportunity will probably be used mainly by trade unions. According to the law, companies that did not previously have trade unions will also have to accept the terms and conditions of collective agreements arranged between representatives of trade unions and of employers. The amendment is also controversial due to its potentially unconstitutional character. A group of members of parliament plans to challenge it in the Constitutional Court of the Slovak Republic: their success is questionable. An almost identical regulation was already challenged in 2010 but was cancelled before the Constitutional court made a decision. Our courts can base their decision on a decision of the Czech Constitutional Court, which ruled in a similar matter: it considered extension of collective agreements to entrepreneurs without their consent to be unconstitutional.

Source: Amendment of Act No. 2/1991 Coll. on collective bargaining

Contact in Bratislava
Mgr. Katarína Babiaková, LL.M.
Phone: +421 2 57880088

 

 

 

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