Unions want list of ‘bad’ employers to be made public

Unions are demanding that a register of ‘bad’ employers in Slovenia be made completely public. Laws require the Slovenian employment service to keep a list of firms which breach employment law by, for example, failing to pay workers’ wages or social security contributions, or who dismiss employees unfairly. A partial register is published, but records of tax evasion, and workers’ complaints are omitted. Officials say they do not want to damage these firms’ credit ratings.

Background

According to the Law on Labour Market Regulation (LLMR) the Employment Service of Slovenia (ZRSZ) must keep a register of employers who have ‘negative references’. The Union of Free Trade Unions of Slovenia (ZSSS) believes the state is legally obliged to publish a complete list.

The LLMR defines employers with negative references as those who:

• do not abide by employment law;

• fail to pay wages;

• fail to pay workers’ social security contributions;

• dismiss workers illegally;

• severely breach workers’ labour rights in some other manner.

Neither the Employment Service nor job agencies are legally obliged to tell workers if companies advertising vacancies are on the register, although the ZRSZ does publish an incomplete list on its website.

Employment service publishes incomplete list

This incomplete list contains only those employers who are advertising vacancies through the ZRSZ and who have been reported as bad by the Labour Inspectorate.

• It omits employers criticised by the Labour Inspectorate but who are not advertising vacancies through the employment service.

• It omits employers in trouble with Slovenia’s tax inspectors, and those reported by the workers themselves.

However, the ZRSZ and other employment providers do collect this data from the Slovenian Labour Inspectorate, through official tax records and from workers.

Employers use tax law to evade publicity

In 2010 the ZSSS fought for and achieved the publication of ZRSZ records showing which employers broke the law on employing foreign workers. A list of 823 companies (in Slovenian, 98Kb PDF), is now published on the ZSSS website, with the firms involved banned from employing migrant workers.

However, the Employment Service has so far refused to publish the full list of bad employers because of rules about tax confidentiality. The ZRSZ believes that publishing the names of companies who do not pay taxes (or social security contributions) would damage these firms’ business reputations and their credit rating. This reason was repeated by the Slovenian government when the Parliamentary Committee for Labour urged it to publish the list.

Štefan Skledar, Institute of Macroeconomic Analysis and Development