Poland: union organizations suspend participation in the Tripartite Committee

Joint initiative.  It was the first time the leaders of the three union confederations (Piotr Duda of NSZZ Solidarnosc, Tadeusz Chwalka of the Union Forum (FZZ) and Jan Guz of OPZZ) organized a joint press conference, during which they announced that they had decided to “suspend” their involvement in the Tripartite Committee’s work.  The three unions justified their decision by the fact that the government “violated the Tripartite Committee Act and disregarded social dialogue.”  After this episode, a letter was sent to Prime Minister Donald Tusk, where the government is blamed for not respecting the minimum number of mandatory Tripartite Committee meetings.  Indeed, the Tripartite Committee Act provides for at least one Committee meeting every two months, i.e. four meetings for the Presidency and three plenary meetings.  Yet, there were only two such meetings in 2011.  The government was also blamed for not circulating the appointment of the Chairman of the Committee to the social partners, or the names of the government’s representatives to the Tripartite Committee.  Indeed, the term of the previous Chairman (Minister of Economic Affairs Waldemar Pawlak) ended in November 2011 and has not been renewed.  Most importantly, the social partners say that the government did not actually consult them.  “Social dialogue is a constitutional obligation for the government.  Yet, the government and its Ministers present us with highly controversial draft reforms, notably that to increase statutory retirement age without an in-depth debate with the representatives of millions of workers” the union leaders write.  “Regulations on consultation periods for bills and regulations are constantly broken” they add.