Social partners debate flexicurity issues

In March 2008, the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation held a meeting to discuss labour market flexicurity. At the event, the government and social partners outlined their (often differing) views on how to achieve flexicurity in Bulgaria.

On 21 March 2008, the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation organised a meeting in Sofia to discuss the topic, ‘Flexicurity and labour market in Bulgaria’. The event brought together representatives of different ministries and institutions, the social partners and researchers from the Bulgarian Academy of Science, to discuss the national mechanisms for implementing the common principles on ‘flexicurity’ adopted by the Council of the EU in December 2007, as part of Bulgaria’s national reform programme (BG0802029I) to implement the EU’s integrated guidelines on economic and employment policy. The EU-wide common principles aim to combine flexibility in labour markets, work organisation and employment relations with both employment security and social security. They seek to combine flexible and reliable contractual arrangements, comprehensive lifelong learning strategies, effective active labour market policies, and modern, adequate and sustainable social protection systems

Government policy

In his opening presentation, Dimitar Dimitrov, deputy minister at the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy, stated that the Bulgarian government will elaborate its own policies and mechanisms according to the four national ‘pathways’ defined by the EU flexicurity initiative. These are as follows:

• tackling ‘contractual segmentation’. This involves reducing the ‘asymmetry’ between non-standard and standard employment through the full integration of atypical contracts in labour legislation, collective agreements, social security and lifelong learning;

• developing flexicurity within the enterprise and offering transition security. This means encouraging companies and workers to be more adaptable by improving security during transition periods;

• tackling skills and opportunity gaps among the workforce. This involves overcoming disparities in the labour force’s skills and opportunities through increasing and extending investments in skills;

• improving opportunities for benefit recipients and informally employed workers. This means promoting employment opportunities for those on benefits, tackling long-term dependence on social assistance, regulating informal employment and establishing better ‘institutional capacity’.

Employers’ priorities

Dikran Tebeyan, the vice-president of the Bulgarian Industrial Association, one of the country’s largest employer associations, highlighted the following key priorities related to flexicurity:

• The main priority is to limit ‘job protection’ while strengthening passive and active labour market policies, with the aim of increasing the employment capability of unemployed people.

• Current limitations on the use of fixed-term contracts should be reduced, while unemployment benefits should be increased, but only to a level that stimulates people to search for jobs.

• It is worth discussing making it easier (in terms of notice periods, compensation payments etc) to dismiss employees, especially in small companies and in relation to young workers, while at the same time giving them greater security in terms of benefits and inclusion in active labour market measures.

• Greater possibilities for increasing working time should be considered. The legal restrictions on overtime work should be relaxed, which would both increase labour flexibility and ensure equal conditions for law-abiding businesses and the ‘grey’ sector (where unlawful and unrestricted overtime is used).

Trade union positions

Chavdar Hristov, the executive secretary of the Confederation of Independent Trade Unions in Bulgaria (CITUB), made the following main points:

• Trade unions are opposed to an increased use of temporary agency work, without a clear regulation of the three-way employment relationship involved, given the low level of security of the workers involved and the opportunities for breaches of employment legislation

• In seeking an optimal balance between deregulation and regulation of the employment relationship, special emphasis should be put on agreed flexibility_._ Liberalization of labour legislation and deregulation of the labour market should be accompanied by an increased role for social dialogue and collective bargaining

• Trade unions support all measures that could widen the opportunities for life-long learning and the achievement of a better work-life balance.

• Given the present low level of security and social protection of employment, further liberalization of the labour market is unthinkable. The new, more flexible environment that is developing under the influence of globalization and technological change requires new forms of security.

Commentary

The major labour market challenges that Bulgaria faces are an ageing population, labour shortages and the need for a better qualified labour force, according to the participants at the meeting. However, it is clear that differences between the social partners remain on flexicurity matters. These relate to issues such as the deregulation of employment and working time, the activity of temporary work agencies, and social security reforms.

Lyuben Tomev, ISTUR