Poland: the predominance of consultation and the absence of forms of

In Poland, the public sector workforce is not regulated in a uniform way: employment conditions of staff are mainly laid down in two separate legal acts. A major distinction exists between civil service corps’ members (government administration) and all other employees who have their own regulations (e.g. the law on self-government employees, the chart of teachers rights etc.).

In great contrast to Finnish statutory civil servants, who are mostly considered as ordinary employees with far-reaching collective bargaining rights, this is not at all the

case for Polish civil service corps members (statutory civil servants and public employees).

Unlike in Finland, social trialogue in Poland at the level of the central public

administration only takes place in the form of consultation. The representative trade unions and representative employer organisations are consulted before legal acts are adopted in the field of the statutory scope of the trade unions and employers’

organisations tasks. The consultation procedure is compulsory and laid down by the law.

According to legislation, the following rule applies in case of disagreement: if the opinion of one of the two organisations is entirely or partially rejected, the state administration must inform the representatives of the respective organisation in writing, whilst justifying their position.

The output of these consultations is, however, not legally binding; it is used as a guideline for the legislative process. Other outputs are political statements about salary and changes in regulations.

Major topics of the trilateral consultation

process Topics excluded from the consultation process

In general, it can be every topic that is within the scope of competences of the trade unions on the basis of binding law issues concerning the economic and social situation as well as working conditions such as:

- Act on civil service and related acts;

- Executive acts on conditions and method of carrying out of first evaluations of civil service corps members;

- Benefits for the civil servants transferred to the job in different localities;

- Detailed principles for description and valuation of the job positions;

- Draft act on customs employees;

- Remuneration for overtime work in the civil service;

- Draft executive act on particular privileges for some categories of civil service corps members;

- Distribution of EU funds;

- Assumption of the amendments of the civil service law in the field of working hours;

- Draft execution act on the rate of the basic salary in the civil service, the amount and detailed rules of awarding and paying bonuses to the basic salary.

Topics that are not covered by the competences of the trade unions.

In comparison to the other three case studies, social trialogue in Poland has the least influence on the legislative process in the field of working conditions. Statutory civil servants and (civil service) public employees are not subject to collective bargaining agreements; there are no binding agreements for central government in the Polish civil service.

Compared to other fields of activities in the private sector, social trialogue in the public administration is less significant. The main institution at national level is the Tripartite Commission for Social and Economic Affairs. The Ministry of Labour and Social Policy plays a leading role in carrying out, coordinating and promoting the social trialogue through the trilateral Commission. This Commission includes the government, the trade unions and the employers’ organisations. For a long time, this Commission did not include a sub-committee dealing with specific civil service problems. Social trialogue with trade unions mostly took place in the Office of the Civil Service, and after its integration in the Chancellery of the Prime Minister in 2006, during debates with the representative organisations on issues with an influence on the civil service.

A special sub-group on self-government administration employees and civil service dealing with special civil service related issues was only created in 2009 on the basis of the resolution n° 34 of the Tripartite Commission for Social and Economic Affairs.

Social trialogue in the government and self-government administration thus became more significant through the introduction of this measure.

The rather informal character and the low degree of institutionalisation and formalisation of the social trialogue are characteristic for the cooperation between employers’ and employees’ organisations in the Polish public administration. There are however some elements of the social trialogue which will be formalised, such as the committee or council to provide permanent relations between the government and the trade unions.

Output of collective bargaining Civil service corps’ members (statutory civil

servants and (civil service) public employees) No collective agreements Some other public employees Collective agreements

2 The administrative/managerial contexts of social dialogue

Research evidence²⁹ clearly shows that staff is not managed in the same way across Europe and that the practices used may vary from a pure personnel administration to a strategic HRM.³⁰ While the major task of the personnel office is in the first case to ensure compliance with the legislation, the multiple tasks of well-trained HR officers also

consist of facilitating a process according to which all activities of the organisation are linked to strategy that is ‘owed’ by all employees. Most of the Member States are on their way between these two management systems. Generally speaking, it seems that in the same way as is the case with NPM, in many career systems like Germany or France strategic HR management meets “with cultural premises that differ from those in the Anglo-Saxon countries”³¹. These differences might at least partly explain why the personnel/HR function and the division of competencies and responsibilities in the field of personnel policy/HRM is not uniform all over Europe, and why there is still a

distinction to be made between more administrative and more managerial systems.

These differences do have an influence on the significance, structure and output of the social dialogue. The chapter below illustrates clearly that the structure of the social dialogue correlates with the organisation of HRM: thus, in Finland, where only the general guidelines in the field of HRM are set at central level, and the managers at agency and unit level are responsible for the implementation process, social dialogue is also rather decentralised and takes place at different levels.

In contrast to Finland, the personnel management is much more centralised in Germany:

thus in the fields of pay and working time policy, decentralised actors such as managers or unit heads are hardly involved. In the same way, lower levels of the public

administration are hardly involved in the collective bargaining process.

29 UK Presidency of the EU 2005, Report on the survey into social dialogue, p. 5ff.

30 See in this context also: World Public Sector Report 2005, Unlocking the Human Potential for Public Sector Performance, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, United Nations, 2005, p.7-25; p. 69-99.

31 Pollitt Ch., Bouckaert Geert, Public Management Reform, Oxford University, New York 2004, p. 53.

2.1 The management of human resources and social dialogue